Sol Invictus
by Riptide Monzarc
Summary: A street rat who tries to lose herself in the deep dark between the stars, chance and her own tenacity make Kelsa Shepard the face of Earth's potential, and the best hope for the galaxy against the Reaper threat. As long as there's even one human left standing at the end of the war, the sun will never truly be conquered. Hope is alive.
1. PRELUDE: Passing Time

Author's note: Welcome to _Sol Invictus_, my Mass Effect saga. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I'm enjoying writing it. Feel free to let me know in reviews or messages! Thanks so much to my wonderful beta-reader, **clafount**, for all of the help and support!

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_Medical Bay, SSV Normandy_

_0300 Zulu (1 hour before Invictus Protocol)_

_13 October 2186_

_Luna (orbit), Terra, Sol_

Even EDI's voice sounds slightly exhausted as it crackles into the medbay. "Commander, Admiral Hackett is hailing with a message, priority alpha zero," the AI intones. "Specialist Traynor is patching him through to the comm room as we speak."

Lieutenant Commander Ashley Williams hesitates for just a moment before she remembers that _she's_ the ranking officer of the _Normandy_, since Commander Shepard was last seen ashore in London, trying to make the last push to the Citadel. _She was last seen getting vaporized by Harbinger's beam_, the LC berates herself; Williams has come to the medbay to relay this fact to Shepard's latest-her _last-_ground team. T'Soni's unconscious, which is a blessing, but Vakarian's eyes are surprisingly sharp, given the painkillers Chakwas has undoubtedly administered.

"You'd better go," the turian prompts her, displaying his hard-earned familiarity with Alliance codewords. "Sounds important."

Williams' lips part, and for an instant she thanks God for the excuse to delay the soul-crushing news; then she feels her eyes burning with shame. "Right," she replies with a crisp nod, her too-long hair spilling over her shoulder, the regulation bun undone in the fighting groundside. Then the LC turns heel, marching mechanically back to the elevator, her heart beating more quickly with every precious second that bleeds away between her and the war room.

The CIC isn't any easier to be in than it was two minutes before; Traynor is frantic, throwing herself into her work. Williams can't blame her, really...the specialist was the first to hear about Shepard, after all. Williams can't even imagine what the other woman's feeling right now. _Bullshit, chief_, she hears Alenko chiding her, and she double-times it through the security checkpoint to the war room, too fast for Westmoreland and Campbell to give her any shit.

Hackett's holo is already waiting for her in the back room. "Good of you to join me, Williams," he quips, but there's no fire behind it. His face, artificial as it is, tells the story that Williams has known since Traynor told her about Shepard: they're losing.

"You wanted to see me, admiral?" Williams prompts, after giving and receiving an automatic salute. Her voice doesn't sound like her own anymore.

Hackett nods heavily, but he still takes a weighted breath. "I need you to return to London, lieutenant commander," he begins. "We've received reports on the ground that Commander Shepard is alive, and that Harbinger is unresponsive. Major Coates and Admiral Anderson have boarded the Citadel, and the Reapers seem to have lost all coordination. Our dreadnaughts have begun concentrating fire on Sovereign-class targets."

Williams isn't sure she understands; the disconnect between Hackett's manner and the message he's conveying makes her wonder if Traynor's playing havoc with the feeds, somehow. "I don't follow, admiral," she admits. "You're saying Shepard's _alive_, and that the Reapers are being pushed back? That Anderson's going to dock the Crucible?" Is that hope she hears echoing around the small comm room?

"I'm saying that Shepard is alive," Hackett confirms. "And that you need to get your ass down there and evacuate her and any other principals you can. Inform her that she's received a field promotion to the rank of captain, and then you get your ass to the Sol relay ASAP. That's an order, Williams."

Williams isn't any closer to sorting out the man's comments about the Citadel, but she's been a marine too long to do anything other than offer another salute and an "Aye, aye, sir."

"I've initiated the _Invictus_ protocol," Hackett amends. "You have one hour, lieutenant commander. Get it done and get the hell out of here." He raises his hand to his brow and swallows hard, his breath catching. "Hackett...out."

The name of the operation is meaningless to Williams, except as one of her dad's poems, but as the feed cuts out, she can't help but shudder. She'd quoted one of the stanzas to Shepard, recently, and the commander had pointed out that it was about not giving in to fate. "EDI," she barks, already running through the war room, hope mingling with fear. "Patch me through to Joker."

For once, the pilot doesn't have any wises to crack. "Gotta sitrep, LC?"

"Reingage stealth drive and take us back to the hot zone where we picked up the ground team," Williams barks, as she brushes through the security checkpoint once more, going back into the CIC. "She's alive." That last she announces loudly enough that the whole CIC hears; Williams wouldn't be surprised if Joker could have heard her. "Double time, flyboy!" _Ohgodohgodohgooood_; for an instant, she's back on Titan, all vertigo and nerves as the floor shifts under her still-marching feet. Only now there's no Gunny Ellison to lay into her ass for goldbricking, and there's no sense of wonder that made taking the verbal beating worthwhile; the fact that the _Normandy _must have jumped into one hell of a bank to get over the inertial dampeners is lost on the LC as she stumbles up to the bridge. They're entering Earth's atmosphere by the time she reaches the bridge. "We've got fifty-nine minutes to pick Shepard up and get out of system," she tells the pilot, much more quietly now.

Joker doesn't quite choke, too busy bringing the ship into atmosphere, but he still shakes his head. "EDI, how far-"

The AI's mobile platform cuts him off. "We will need to attain an average velocity of 5.6 times lightspeed in order to reach the Charon Relay if we leave within the next ten minutes. The drive core has enough spare capacity for 3.5 hours of travel at that speed."

The pilot's shoulders sag in relief. "We're two minutes out," he tells Williams. "I'm gonna set us down a hundred meters from the beam; if you can get in and out in about five minutes, we should be able to make it, Ash."

She's running toward the elevator again before Joker's finished talking, her heart beating a tattoo against the inside of her chest. It takes over a minute to reach the shuttle bay, which feels like a goddamned eternity, but the cargo door's still closed when Williams makes it out of the elevator.

"Talk to me, LC," Vega calls from his bunk, still wearing his armour and nursing his Mattock assault rifle. "We headin' out of system?"

Williams unracks her own Vindicator and grabs a belt of thermal clips, in case the pickup is even dirtier than she's expecting. "Not yet," she says. "Get ready to hop groundside-we're picking Shepard up. Thirty seconds to land." The lieutenant looks surprised but not blown away by the news-he doesn't know that Shepard should be dead. Again.

Cortez already has his M-8 in hand. "Ready to provide suppressive fire, ma'am," he informs her. He still looks a little shaken from the shuttle crash and extraction from a couple of hours ago, but Williams won't turn his help away.

Vega joins her as the ramp lowers onto the hell at the heart of London. Williams doesn't stop to think about the swarm of Husks covering the ground from the _Normandy _all the way to the Citadel transport beam; she doesn't stop to think about how the beam doesn't look active anymore; she doesn't stop to think about Harbinger, frozen in place, its yellow eyes still glowing pure hate over the battlefield; she doesn't stop to think that her sisters and mother were on the Citadel when the Reapers took control of it. Instead the LC dives out of the _Normandy _with Vega at her side, and they proceed to cut a swathe through the ravening synthetic mob.

Their direction is uncertain at first, but in a handful of seconds, Williams notices a familiar silhouette against the mangled grey concrete and rebar, off in the distance. "Looks like Wrex! And he's not alone!"

"Looks like they set up a perimeter," Vega observes, and he doesn't need her order to make straight for the island of serenity amidst the sea of carnage.

Urdnot Wrex charges out of his line of krogan shock troops to meet them halfway, intercepting a Brute that looks like it was trying to head the humans off. The krogan lunges inside the Brute's reach and puts an incendiary-modded spike right through the bastard's forehead; it screams and flails, but Williams and Vega finish it off without too much trouble.

Williams blinks as Wrex turns to face her. "That's Shepard's gun," she yells at him, accusingly.

Wrex tilts his head from left to right in the krogan equivalent of a shrug, hefting a scratched-up Graal spike-thrower. "It's a good gun," he declares. "She almost killed me with it not five minutes ago, then she passed out when the rest of the cavalry arrived. I'm keepin' it warm for her."

The LC's on the verge of questioning the krogan further when another krogan, one she knows by second-hand reports more than first-hand experience, steps forward. He's holding what looks like a burnt corpse in his arms, hardly recognisable as human, armour still smoking lightly. "Chief," he barks, and Williams blinks again, but then she realises that he's addressing Wrex. "This our way out?"

"It's yours, Grunt," the elder krogan confirms, and then he nods to the rest of his men. "We still got a few hundred Reaper troops left to kill, pup."

Something in Hackett's orders catches in Williams' mind. "You're coming too, Wrex," she informs him, even as she switches out a thermal clip and lays more fire into the Husks around them. "Hackett told me to snag all the big shots I could, and right now, it looks like you're it, big guy."

From her left, a line of Husks glows biotic blue before a detonation shreds it apart, sending cybernetic limbs and heads flying in every direction. Two mismatched figures fill the gap, both shimmering with dark energy; one alien and familiar, the other human and obscure, but both looking starved for vengeance. "I have not survived fifty thousand years only to die short of victory," Javik proclaims, and the much smaller woman beside him only screams before she sends more pulses of energy rippling out into their enemies. "I suggest we return to the _Normandy_," the prothean amends, after triggering another biotic detonation.

Williams knows she's running out of time, and she has to take it on faith that Grunt's carrying a living, breathing Shepard, rather than a corpse. "Let's move out," she commands, and she can hardly believe it when her former crewmate with his stolen gun takes off beside her. Wrex, Javik, and the human biotic make evac easier than infil, and they reach the shuttle bay with about thirty seconds left on EDI's estimated window. "All bodies present and accounted for," she tells the ship. "Close the hatch and bug out, Joker!"

"Aye, aye, ma'am," comes the reply over the intercom.

One last look over her shoulder shows London falling away as the shuttle bay door lifts up, and by the time she's escorted Grunt to the med bay, Williams prays they've already hit FTL.

"What on Earth…" Doctor Chakwas exclaims, when the big krogan bursts through the door. "Grunt...is that-_Shepard_?!"

In her two tours with the doctor, Williams has never heard her let out such a high-pitched squeal of terror and distress, and a bucket of ice floods the LC's gut. She sees that T'Soni's still out cold, and Vakarian has joined the asari in oblivion, which is a small blessing in the midst of this chaos. "Gimme some good news, Doc," Williams begs, as the doctor helps to guide Shepard's charred frame-_please, God, don't let it be a corpse_-onto one of the bay's unoccupied beds.

"I'll see what I can do," Chakwas vows, but her tone's gone from frightened to distant, the kind Williams imagines she adopts when she's about to say _I've got some bad news_…

But then the doctor gasps. "There's a pulse," she declares, and then glares at Grunt. "What are you waiting for, you great buffoon? Get her out of that armour! Now!" Even as she talks, Chawkas activates her omni-tool; where soldiers have various weapons at the ready, the Alliance has also developed medical applications with the newest 'tools, and the doctor's forearm disappears beneath an enormous orange scalpel that helps her cut through the ruin that Shepard's armour's gotten turned into.

Here, under the warm lights of the med bay, it's not at all obvious that the commander's still alive. As her chest piece is pulled away, Williams sees that there's hardly a square inch of normally pecan-brown flesh that isn't glowing an angry orange from Cerberus cybernetic implants and synthetic fibers. The woman's hair has been burnt away and her left arm is twisted at an odd angle, right from the shoulder. Chakwas runs more scans and mutters medical jargon to herself, running through the Greek alphabet with increasingly-dire adjectives. Williams shares a skeptical look with the krogan; they're both worse than useless now, and they know it, but the doc hasn't kicked them out yet.

"If you're just going to stand around," Chakwas barks, "you'd might as well make yourselves useful. Ashley, fetch me a saline drip from the cupboard behind you, and then look for a syringe of carfentanyl. There should be some in the secure locker beneath the cupboard."

The LC snaps into action, too many years of training helping her to follow orders; no matter the rank, in the med bay, the doc's always in charge. The saline she can find easy, and in a second it's hooked up to an IV and dripping into Shepard's marginally-less-charred right arm. The syringe is a bit trickier to locate; the first time, she picks up a vial of something called korazephan, and the doc nearly bites her head off. As soon as Williams turns back toward the locker, however, a cry of surprise sounds from behind her, immediately followed by a scuffling noise. The LC spins around to see Shepard doing her best to sit up, both her hands locked in a death grip with Grunt's-Chakwas has backed away, her own hands at her throat.

"Battlemaster," the krogan growls, strain evident in his voice. "You need to lie down!"

Williams steps closer as the doc skirts around, mumbling to herself about sedatives instead of painkillers. The LC pushes down on Shepard's rippling shoulders, but her weight is a drop in the bucket compared to a krogan's, so the commander-captain, now, Williams supposes-hardly seems to notice. Shepard doesn't even look at Williams; her irises burn as red as blood, not a single hint of green peeking through the Cerberus tech, and she stares _through_ Grunt, like he isn't even there. "You're on the _Normandy_, Commander," Williams barks, trying to get the woman's attention. "You're safe!"

Those fiery eyes shift to Williams, but there's no more comprehension in them than there was a minute ago; there isn't even the hostile disdain the woman showed her on Eden Prime, nor the cool distance that lasted from Virmire until after Sovereign's destruction. It's the stare of a cold-blooded murderer who doesn't even need to know her victim's names before she snuffs them out.

Somehow, between the two of them, Williams and Grunt keep Shepard immobile long enough for Chakwas to inject something into the struggling woman's IV line. The LC doesn't make the mistake of relaxing, waiting for the commander's eyes to cloud over...only they never do, and it seems to get harder to hold her down, instead of easier. "Think we're gonna need a little more, doc," she observes, gritting her teeth.

Shepard says nothing; even her breathing is quieter than anyone else's in the room, even the knocked-out patients'. Another dose of the sedative has no more effect than the first, and Chakwas airs concerns about a third being enough to kill an elcor. A hand lands heavily on Williams' shoulder, and if she weren't so distracted by keeping her commanding officer from rising off of the table and likely killing them all, the LC would probably have put a couple of rounds into the offending party. As it stands, Williams nearly loses her grip on Shepard when she glances up to find T'Soni, straining to keep her weight off of a shattered shin. "You sure you wanna see this, doc?" Williams asks, but the asari has no more attention to spare her than Shepard seems to.

T'Soni's free hand caresses over Shepard's scarred cheek. "Kelsa," the asari breathes, as rough as the flesh underneath her fingertips.

Those two syllables, Shepard's first name, cause a jolt to cross the commander's face, and the woman finally blinks. A gravel-laced grunt comes from her throat that might, once, have been _Liara_. Then those lava-like eyes roll back in Shepard's head and she goes limp so suddenly that Williams and Grunt nearly butt heads-or, at least, Williams' head nearly smacks into Grunt's shoulder-and the LC has to scramble to catch T'Soni before the asari falls and breaks her leg even worse.

"Thank you," the asari manages, her face twisting in pain as Williams helps her hobble onto the nearest bed...not the one T'Soni's just crawled out of, the LC notes, but she keeps the observation to herself. The asari fights to keep herself in a sitting position. "Kelsa should probably be restrained," T'Soni suggests, and her cringe might not be entirely out of physical agony. "Before she regains consciousness again."

"I concur," Doctor Chakwas chimes in, and it's only a matter of a few buttons pressed on the bed's interface before Shepard is nearly mummified beneath carbide straps strong enough to keep a blood-raging krogan at bay. "Now the both of you should leave," the doc sighs, glancing to Williams and Grunt. "I believe I can handle it from here."

The LC nods and gestures for the krogan to precede her out of the med bay. Once the doors have hissed closed behind her, Williams stumbles to an empty sleeper pod, and tells EDI to wake her once they've jumped out of the Sol system.

* * *

_Medical Bay, SSV Normandy_

_0420 Zulu (20 minutes after Invictus Protocol)_

_13 October 2186_

_Omega (docked), Sahrabarik_

Boarding ships she's not in command of isn't normally Aria T'Loak's thing, but even the undisputed ruler of Omega can make exceptions when she's asked politely by two shotgun-wielding krogan and a human with enough biotics that her own shotgun might as well just be for show. Especially since she knows that they wouldn't have come to her if there were any other option available. The infirmary has three patients and one loiterer; Aria's never met the doctor or the spare, but she recognises both of the aliens. Liara's face isn't quite as guileless as it was the last time the squidling was on Omega, three years before, but the young asari still has a long way to go before she hits the Matron stage. "Tell me why I'm here in ten words or less, or I go back to Afterlife," the crime lord scoffs, with hardly a glance to the unconscious human tied down to her table.

"Kelsa has suppressive amnesia and I'm too weak to help," Liara retorts, almost immediately, looking defiant even as she lays in her own bed. "You owe-"

"I know _exactly_ what I owe her," Aria cuts in, grimacing. The undisputed ruler of Omega isn't in the habit of owing anybody any favours, either, but unusual circumstances have a habit of unfolding in Shepard's wake. The crime lord reconsiders the well-bound body; if she were huddled in the slums, she'd likely be considered too far gone even to bother with a bullet, but the table's life support monitors show surprisingly robust vitals. "I thought you were all on Earth," she observes, moving into the space between Liara's bed and Shepard's.

The younger human's attention turns from the unconscious human, her expression as disgustingly devoted as a tame varren's. "We were," she confirms, her voice trembling with emotion. "But we were ordered away. There have been no communications from the system for nearly half an hour; it's impossible to know if it is radio silence, or…"

Aria's already bored, even by the idea that the Reapers have beaten the little armada that the galaxy's cobbled together to throw at them. "And no matter what happens, you have to make sure your saviour is ready to dance like a trained pyjak when the comms come back online." She rolls her eyes. "I take it by your wrinkling brow-ridge that you have a personal stake in Shepard's recovery?" The crime lord can only snort at the human's earnest nod.

"As do I," Liara ventures. "As well as everyone else in the galaxy, if we have any hope of breaking the cycles."

Aria crosses her arms, tilting her head in Shepard's direction. "You've already attempted to recover her memories with a simple meld," she observes. "Otherwise you wouldn't have come to me. So what did you find?"

The squidling's answer is a moment in coming. "Kelsa is there," she proclaims. "Trapped beneath a fog; during the meld she's lucid, in the depths of her mind, and she remains so for a few seconds after I pull back...but it never lasts." Liara shudders, sharing a frightened look with the talkative human. "And then she loses herself and tries to rise from the bed, likely to attack, out of instinct rather than desire."

The crime lord snorts. "You tried to meld more than once?" She shakes her head, not bothering to hide her derision. "No wonder you've exhausted yourself. Do you really not know how to recover suppressed memories?" Liara's cheeks lavender, and she indicates her ignorance without saying anything. "Children," Aria sighs. "I swear, they shouldn't let anyone under 250 off of Thessia."

The human woman swells with indignation. "Are you serious?" She demands, pointing a shaking finger at the elder asari. "Don't you care that Kelsa's mind has been turned inside out?"

Aria arches a brow at the girl's bravado. "Normally I wouldn't give a shit," she boasts, freely. "The only reason I'm here is because Shepard did me the biggest favour I've ever needed." The asari turns back to the supine human, who appears to be sleeping peacefully. "What you're asking me to do isn't easy," she admits, hating herself for her own hesitation. "And Shepard might not be grateful, even if it works."

"But you _can_ do it," Liara insists, her tone just beneath a question. "She will be grateful, too...she does not want to die. She told me as much during the second meld."

The crime lord shrugs. "You'd better keep the tattooed woman away from her, then," she advises them. "I believe her exact words were '_You bring that bitch back so I can kill her __myself_.'"

"Jack will come around," the other asari sighs. "And if not...there's always Javik's preferred solution to insubordination."

Aria isn't curious enough to ask who in the blue fuck _Javik_ is supposed to be, nor how it deals with rebellious underlings. "Have you bonded with Shepard?" The woman's hesitation is answer enough. "It might mean the difference between a couple of minutes and a couple of hours," the elder asari says.

Another moment passes before Liara finally gives her reply. "Yes," she sighs. "Quite recently, in fact."

"What?!" The human sounds as betrayed as Aria might could have predicted, if she cared about either of their feelings. "You both promised!"

Liara's lips part to begin explaining this evident breach of trust, but Aria steps in. "What's done is done," she points out. "You two will have plenty of time to fight it out later, but right now I need to know how much time you're willing to spend recovering Shepard's memories." It isn't a question, but Aria's eyes don't waver from Liara.

The asari looks confused. "I...thought you just said it could take only a few minutes," she ventures.

"Out here," the crime lord affirms, "if I can use your bond as an anchor. But to get Shepard's memories back, we have to take her through them again, one by one. That means that _we_ have to experience them. I can do it by myself, but it'll take me a lot longer to run through Shepard's life than if we work together." The admission pains her, but Aria's used to pain.

Liara still doesn't seem to understand. "You're saying that we have to show Kelsa her whole life?"

Aria chuckles, darkly. "I'm saying that you're going to close your eyes, and when you open them again, you'll be at the beginning of Shepard's first memory, looking out through her eyes. You won't remember anything about yourself...from your perspective, you'll _be_ Shepard," she informs the woman. "And you'll have to live every second of her life, up to the moment that she lost her memories. Every secret, every thought, every single heartbeat." Aria's lips curl into a sneer. "And I'll be right there with you, living it myself, though we won't be aware of each other at all." She glances at the human woman, who's gone from incredulous to apprehensive. "When I left Afterlife, I didn't think it'd take me forty years to get back to it."

"Thirty years," Liara corrects her. "And I've never heard of whatever procedure you're talking about," she adds, somewhat reproachfully.

"We've established that," Aria retorts, before looking back over her shoulder. "You both should leave the room. If all goes well, only five minutes or so should pass out here, but if you interrupt the process at all, the best-case scenario is that the squidling and I will have to start again." The younger human hesitates. "You _don't_ want to know what the worst-case scenario is, little pyjak. Now _move_."

The woman bites her lip, giving Liara an uncertain look. "We'll be fine, Samantha," the asari assures her, which seems to shake the girl from her stasis. The human doctor, who's been perfectly quiet during Aria's visit so far, loiters only long enough to adjust the turian's sedatives to make sure he doesn't wake up during the procedure.

A moment later, the two asari are the only conscious creatures in the room, unless Aria wants to count the synthetic she heard talking over the comms on her way in. The crime lord takes a steadying breath, laying the butt of her right palm against Shepard's forehead and extending her left hand. "Take it and get ready to _embrace eternity_," Aria sneers, and she dives into Shepard's mind before she can regret agreeing to debase herself so far for the woman.


	2. Ch 1: Hard Knock Life

Author's note: Thanks so much to everyone who's already dropped a review! I appreciate any comments I receive, and I answer all signed reviews or private messages. I also have to thank my excellent beta-reader, **clafount**, for her help and encouragement.

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_Saint Mary's Orphanage_

_01:08 AM Eastern Standard Time_

_3 May 2162_

_Detroit, MI, UNAS, Terra, Sol_

She had the dream again, realer than real, realer than the cold grey world she wakes up in. In the dream, her bed had high walls with see-through bars, and a pretty lady that smiled down on her and called her _Kelsa_. That ain't what the grey ladies call her while she's awake, but she's pretty sure the lady in her dreams is her mommy. At least she _hopes_ so. But in her sleep, she sees the pretty lady crying, and there ain't nothin' she can do to help her. When she wakes up, she don't have a mommy, and the grey ladies tell her she ain't never had one. There's always been her room with the two bunk beds and the three older girls, Gloria and Sarah and Anne. None of them got mommies, either, but they answer to the names the grey ladies gave 'em, and they all call the grey ladies 'Mother'.

Kelsa answers to the wrong name, too, at least after her knuckles nearly got broke with a ruler and she still had to work in the laundry all day after. So now when the grey ladies call her _Ruth_ she smiles, and when the fancy men come by to check up on her, she wears her hair pretty in braids. She likes those days; she don't have to work in the laundry, then, while the fancy men are watching. Sometimes she even gets to play in the warm room, with other girls her age, at least for a little bit. But then afterward she has to work twice as hard, and if she doesn't smile enough, she has to climb up the long steps on her knees when she says her prayers at night. They get cut and scraped and hurt for days after, always, but she makes her cheeks hurt from smiling whenever the grey ladies look in on her.

She's six...at least she thinks so, anyway. She's definitely older than five, and she's pretty sure she ain't seven yet. Gloria's already showed her how to read a little bit, enough to follow the signs to the laundry, but she can't tell any of the grey ladies unless she wants to climb the steps again. She and the other girls in her room ain't got birthdays like the girls who live upstairs, the girls that spend all day in the playpen 'stead of just when the fancy men come by. Them girls are for adopting, the grey ladies say, but Kelsa and the others are just good for working. Kelsa doesn't know why, but the older girls say it's 'cause they're brown, while the upstairs girls are all pink and pretty, pink like the grey ladies. That ain't all true, but when Kelsa figures out to look for it, she only sees a couple pink girls down in the laundry and a couple brown girls up in the playpens.

Tonight she gets shook out of her dream by Gloria. "Ruth," the girl whispers. "Ruth, wake up!"

"'M not Ruth," Kelsa mumbles, too sleepy to be scared of getting another smack on the knuckles.

The older girl clicks her tongue. "Fine, crazy girl," she hisses. "We gotta go!" She sounds as scared as Kelsa's ever heard her, scared like she's gotta climb the steps twice in a row and then say her prayers ten times over.

So scared that it can only mean one thing. "You bleedin', ain'cha?" Gloria's the oldest of them, almost twelve, and she's been stuck in the laundry as long as she can remember, just like Kelsa's been stuck as long as she can remember. She used to be the youngest, just like Kelsa's the youngest. But one by one, year after year, all the older girls got took away; none of 'em lasted a week after they started bleeding, and Gloria said she ain't never seen any of 'em again.

"Yeah," Gloria whines, her brown eyes shining, like she's been crying. "Anne and Sarah's too scared to run away," she tells Kelsa, and the younger girl looks to the other bunk; both of the other girls are laying still, too still to really be asleep. "You too scared, too?"

Kelsa bites her bottom lip until it hurts...but it don't hurt as much as a ruler on the backs of her hands. "No," the girl decides. "I ain't scared of nothin'."

The other girl looks happier than Kelsa's ever seen her. "Come on, then," she hisses. "Quick!" And then she hops down the ladder, making room for Kelsa to follow. The floor is cold on Kelsa's bare feet and she has to hold up the hem of her gown to keep from tripping over it, but she follows Gloria to the door. It's locked, just like usual, but Gloria touches the calling panel. She grabs hold of Kelsa's hand and squeezes tight as they wait. "Just do like I do."

It's only a minute or two until the door cracks open, just wide enough for Kelsa to fit her nose through, and one of the grey ladies stands on the other side, eyeing the gap. "Gloria," the woman warbles, and it sounds like Mother Janice. "How may we help you tonight?"

"We have to use the bathroom," Gloria whispers. "Ruth and me, really really bad. Please, Mother," she whimpers. Kelsa manages to swallow back her objection to the wrong name this time.

The door doesn't move. "You know the rules, girls," Mother Janice tells them, but Kelsa starts whimpering too, just like Gloria. The grey lady breathes a long-suffering sigh and mutters a prayer. "Very well, but both of you will come quickly." She opens the door just wide enough for Gloria to squeeze through, and Kelsa scurries after her, keeping hold of the older girl's hand as hard as she can.

This grey lady is Mother Janice, after all, and she ushers the two girls down the dark hallway to the small bathroom that Kelsa's bunkmates share with two other dorms in this wing of the laundry. "We gotta go in together," Gloria exclaims, throwing Kelsa a pained look. "We both about to pop!"

Kelsa nods, and the look on Mother Janice's face _does_ make her need to pee, but the woman only gives a slight nod. "Don't take too long," she warns them, "or you shall regret it come the morning." She mutters about allowing too much grape juice during communion, but Gloria pulls Kelsa into the little room before the woman can change her mind.

"Go stand on the sink," Gloria instructs, fumbling with the front of her gown. "Go!" She hisses again, and Kelsa climbs up on the steel shelf; it's even colder than the floor, so cold it makes the girl shiver. A crackling sound makes Kelsa turn around, and she sees Gloria running an old screwdriver through a bunch of wires on a panel beside the door. A second later, Mother Janice's muffled voice sounds from the other side of the door, followed by an insistent knocking. "Here," Gloria says, holding the tool up for Kelsa. "Start takin' off the grate!"

Kelsa spins around again, her heart hammering. High on the wall, almost higher than she can reach, there's a small square of slotted steel that lets fresh air into the room. The girl panics, unsure what to do; she's never handled a screwdriver before, doesn't know how to make it work. "What do I _do_?" She whines, her voice cracking at the loud bangs and warnings coming from the other side of the door.

Gloria finishes climbing up onto the sink and snatches the screwdriver back. "Move over, _baby_," she hisses. "Go cry in a corner if you can't help." She pushes the narrow end of the screwdriver into one of the grate's slotted screws, and the older girl tugs and tugs, but she can't seem to loosen it. "Help me out!"

"I'm not a baby," Kelsa growls, still trying to get her balance from being pushed to one side.

"Then prove it and help me," Gloria says. "Come and push while I pull, or you'll be crying worse than any baby when they come through that door!" That shakes Kelsa out of her pouting, and she grabs the screwdriver's handle. Together, the two girls pry the screw loose, and Gloria spins it out of the wall. Three more screws take another minute, and the yelling from the other side of the door gets louder and louder every beat of Kelsa's heart. There have to be more grey ladies outside the door, or maybe even the _Father_. Sparks start coming from the edge of the door as Gloria wrenches the grate out of the wall. "You go on ahead," Gloria tells the younger girl, slapping the screwdriver into Kelsa's hand again. "You'll fit better than me."

Kelsa nods and lets Gloria boost her up into the new hole in the wall; it's a tight fit, dark, and the walls bang in her ears when she crawls deeper into the tunnel. But the sound from the bathroom's getting louder, loud enough to make Kelsa crawl faster, until her knuckles push up against another slotted metal square. Fresh air tickles against her skin and she hears outside noise, like the kind she hears sometimes when she's up in the playpen. "I think it's outside!" Kelsa squeals, her voice bouncing around half a dozen times.

"Hush!" Gloria growls, just behind her feet. "Keep going!"

Kelsa pushes and pushes, but the grate doesn't budge. "I can't get it!" Now there's angry voices screaming from behind them, from the bathroom.

"You gotta jam the screwdriver into the side and pop it out," the older girl hisses. "Goddamnit, I _knew_ I shoulda went first!"

The bad word makes Kelsa gasp, too many whacks from the ruler making her knuckles hurt even at the thought, but that's nothing to what she'll feel like if the grey ladies catch her. Blindly, the girl shoves the sharp end of the screwdriver into the corner, and she squeaks when it slips an inch. Gritting her teeth, Kelsa works the tool back and forth until her arms burn, and suddenly she hears a loud _pop_ and feels a sudden rush of cool air. "I did it!"

Gloria grunts. "Great, now do it again until the thing comes off! Move!"

Kelsa's arms hurt and her feet are getting numb, but she can't cry. She only ever cried once, the first time she had to climb the steps on her knees; the pretty lady in her dream does all her crying for her. Gritting her teeth, Kelsa moves the screwdriver to the other corner and she works it until the metal gives off another _pop_, and the bottom half of the panel is bent out, just a little bit. Kelsa works up both sides and the gap gets bigger, big enough to see out of.

"Hurry up!" Gloria pushes, panicked. "I can feel fingers on my feet!"

The younger girl whimpers, her hands shaking, but she manages to pop off a third corner and the panel swings on the last one, giving Kelsa a good look at the outside. Without thinking, the girl pushes the steel square to one side and drags herself out of the tunnel. Then the whole world pitches forward and Kelsa can't help her high scream, thinking she's gonna fall a million miles, that she's gonna fall forever...but the gap's less than a foot, easy for her to catch herself on the hard pavement. Her hands sting with a dozen little cuts and the panel scrapes down the side of her leg as she falls, deep enough to draw more blood. But Kelsa's outside, for the first time she can ever remember.

She's _free_.

"Help!" Gloria calls from right behind her, breaking into Kelsa's spinning head. "I'm stuck!" The younger girl spins the grate up and away from the hole, and Gloria drags herself from the narrow tunnel, her own arms and legs scratched up to pieces. "We gotta move quick, or they'll catch us, no doubts!"

There's brick and concrete and pavement in every direction, and no way to tell which is the right way to go. But a bunch of grown-up voices and barking dogs tell them the _wrong_ way to go, and the girls take off running, over streets that would've been deadly a decade before and through alleyways that've been deadly for almost a hundred years. All the girls know is that the dogs and the grown-ups stop following them after they cross a big, crumbling road. Kelsa and Gloria keep running until they go over another big road, and then another after that, before Gloria thinks they've gone far enough.

* * *

_Turnhill Community Centre (abandoned)_

_09:30 AM Eastern Standard Time_

_8 May 2162_

_Detroit (Derelict Zone-unacknowledged), MI, UNAS, Terra, Sol_

Four whole days without having to work the steamers and dryers until you're too tired to stand up anymore can buy your stomach an awful lot of time, but Kelsa's getting _hungry_. Gloria smuggled a couple rolls from Sunday supper, but those were gone after the first day, and they ain't found nothing like an apple tree or anything else they can swipe any food from. In fact, they ain't seen anything green at all; everything's black and brown and grey, crumbling and rusting and falling down. Sometimes, during the day, Kelsa can look up and see a few skycars flying around the old buildings. They scare her at first, a little, but they're not really any stranger than most of the other things that she and Gloria see in those first days out of the laundry. Dogs still bark at night, and sometimes they hear odd banging sounds and people yelling, but if the grey ladies are looking for the girls, they don't find 'em.

Early on the fifth morning after their escape, Gloria leads them to a building that looks even more broken-down and empty than most of the others they saw so far. It's got red marks all over the outside, circles with blobs inside that kinda look like a flower Kelsa found pressed inside the Bible, once, when she looked at the book without permission one Sunday a few months back. Mother Abigail made her hands hurt for days after that, and the memory makes Kelsa stop short in front of the open doorway.

Gloria's too hungry to roll her eyes, but she still manages a dirty look. "You scared of the dark, _baby_?"

Kelsa swallows and shakes her head. "I ain't a baby," she whines, trying to keep her lip from jutting out like it always does when she says that. "And I ain't scared of _nothin_'!" To prove it, the filthy girl marches past her older friend, right into the dark beyond the busted door.

Except the room ain't as dark as it looks, and the building ain't as empty, either. There's a boy, even older than Gloria. He's sitting in front of another broken door, leaning back in his chair, and there's a funny metal stick in his hand, that he points right at Kelsa. "Where you from, little _chica_? Whatchu want?"

Even though she just boasted about not being afraid, Kelsa freezes; she's only ever talked to a couple of fancy men before, with their big words and glasses and the clothes she's helped to wash. She ain't never talked to a boy before, really, even one almost a man. Gloria speaks up instead. "We come from the laundry," she says. "We hungry. Please don't shoot us."

The boy cocks his head at them, but after a second he pulls his stick back. "The laundry?" He chuckles, and he looks hungry, too, but mostly he's looking at Gloria. "Where the fuck is that?"

"They mean they come from an orphanage, Rafael," comes another voice, a grown voice. Almost a fancy man voice. The boy in the chair nearly falls over, he stands up so fast, and he turns toward the doorway behind him as the talking man steps forward. He ain't dressed in black and white like a fancy man, but the boy looks at him like the grey ladies look at the fancy men whenever they come by the laundry's upstairs. The man himself looks at Gloria and Kelsa, but he don't look at them all hungry, not like the boy looks at Gloria. "What's your name, girl?" The man asks the older one.

"Gloria," she answers him after a second, suddenly shy. "This is Ruth."

A flash of anger nearly makes Kelsa blind, and she punches the other girl's shoulder. "I _told_ you," the younger girl screams. "My name's Kelsa!"

The man coughs a couple times to get their attention. "There ain't no need for that, now," he tells them, and he smiles a white-and-yellow smile that tugs up around his eyes. It don't look like a grey lady smile at all. "Why does she think you're called _Ruth_, little girl?"

"'Cause that's what the grey ladies call me," Kelsa admits, her face bunching up. "They hit us if we don't answer to the names they give us…"

"Grey ladies," the man hums, and then he starts laughing. "You mean the nuns?" He shakes his head, still chuckling. "And you think it's fair that you hit Gloria when she don't use the name you give her?"

Kelsa blinks. "...I guess not," she admits, blinking and flinching when she sees Gloria still rubbing her arm. "But the grey ladies ain't around to hit us no more," the younger girl points out. "And Kelsa's the name my momma gimme. Ain't nobody callin' me _Ruth_ again."

That makes the man chuckle, and he takes a few steps forward, going down to one knee, until his face is just a half a foot away from hers. "You got a last name, Ruth?" Before she can think, before she even has a chance to breathe, Kelsa's fist closes the gap right into the not-quite-fancy man's nose. She hears a _crack_ and feels the hard meat shift underneath her knuckles, and a second later the man's sprawled across the dirty floor, hissing loud and cupping his face. The old boy points his metal stick at Kelsa again and says a bunch of bad words, and Gloria starts crying and begging for him not to shoot, but the man holds up a bloody hand. "The _chica _has _cojones_," the man grunts, and he's chuckling again as he climbs back up.

"Oh please, oh please," Gloria whines. "Please don't kill us!" She hunches back from the boy's stick and starts praying under her breath, and Kelsa gets the feeling that she should be afraid of the boy, but the younger girl doesn't move.

The man shakes his head. "Nobody's killing either of you today," he promises, his voice thicker. Another twitch of his hand, and the boy pulls up the metal stick. His nose looks crooked, but there's a light in his eyes as he looks at Kelsa. "You pretty strong for a little girl," he points out. "You ain't scared of a shotgun, either?"

She shakes her head. "I ain't scared of nothin'," she says again. "And I ain't got a last name." The grey ladies give her one, or they tried to, but she ain't gonna tell him what it was. "Just Kelsa."

"How old are you, just Kelsa?" The man wipes some more blood off of his upper lip and rubs his hand clean on his shirtsleeve, and she ain't sure she likes how he looks at her. Not hungry, not like the boy keeps staring at Gloria, but like he could still eat her if he don't like what she says.

"Six," Kelsa answers, after a second. "I think."

That makes him laugh again. "Give me a child until he is seven," he says, almost like he's reading out of a book, "and I'll give you the man, eh?" He shakes his head. "Luckily for me the nuns couldn't keep you quite long enough. You are hungry, yes?"

The younger girl nods, her stomach pulling in on itself. "We ain't eat in a couple days," she tells him, looking over to Gloria. "Not really since we run from the laundry."

The man nods, frowning. "I will give you each one meal for free," he says. "You may call me Mister Varga. This ain't a laundromat, and nor is it an orphanage, but I am a businessman. That means you will have to work to earn your keep."

"We can work," Gloria claims. "We can wash clothes and dishes and-"

The man, Mister Varga, laughs even louder than he did after Kelsa broke his nose. "I'm sure we can find a place for both of you in our organisation, but that can wait until tomorrow," he lets on. "For now, Rafael will lead you to the kitchen." He glances at the boy, who's propping his stick-_shotgun_, Kelsa guesses-up on his shoulder. "Have Shep show them around and give them a cot to sleep in for the night, and then come back here to guard the door."

The boy stands up straighter. "_Si_, Mister Varga," he answers, and then he whistles at the girls. "Come on. Food."

Gloria shrugs, looking shy again, but Kelsa's stomach gnaws at her ribs and she sets off after the boy. The building inside has lots of people in it moving around, from kids almost as young as Kelsa to a man who looks even older than Mother Abigail, and everybody seems like they're running like they work in the laundry. But most of them smile, and they talk to each other, and none of the girls wear any gowns or dresses. Before they reach food, Rafael whistles at another boy, this one much younger, maybe a couple years older than Kelsa. His skin's light, almost pink, like an adoptable.

"Take these _chicas_ to get somethin' to eat," Rafael tells the boy, "and then show 'em someplace they can sleep when it gets dark. Mister Varga's gonna deal 'em in tomorrow."

The younger boy nods a few times. "You got it, Raff," he tells the older boy. Rafael gives the boy a tight nod before he turns back and marches toward the front of the building again, leaving Kelsa and Gloria alone with the younger boy. "Follow me, ladies," the boy says, and he stalks down a hall with a flickering light. "People call me Shep." He sounds like he wants them to call him that, too. "What do people call you?"

"Kelsa," she says before Gloria can get herself punched again. The other girl gives her own name but doesn't say anything else, probably too hungry.

Shep nods and ducks into a small room that's got a table, a sink, and a refrigerator. "They's bread up in the shelf and some peanut butter in the fridge," he lets them know. "Help yourselves." His eyes are blue, like ice, but warm. It's almost a race to get the ingredients together; they make their sandwiches on the bare table while Shep fills up a couple glasses with water, and the girls devour a sandwich apiece before the boy speaks up again. "So...what kinda name is _Kelsa_, anyhow?"

The girl takes a long, long drink of water before she answers. "My name," she says, shrugging. "What kinda name is _Shep_?"

"My name," the boy throws back at her, smirking. "But you should probly have another sandwich or two, in case Mister Varga doesn't wanna let you have anymore."

Kelsa takes Shep's advice, but Gloria looks a little nervous. "What is this place, anyway?"

Shep shrugs. "We a family, here," he claims, and then he tilts his head and pulls down his collar. Low on his neck, there's a little picture of a red flower. It's almost pretty. "Mister Varga feeds us and keeps us safe," the boy says after he pulls his collar up, "and we work for him. You keep doing like he says, he don't care what you do otherwise."

Kelsa swallows her mouthful of peanut butter. "This family got a name?"

The boy nods, grinning. "We the Reds," he brags. "Nobody fucks with us."


	3. Ch 2: Her First Time

Author's note: Thanks so much to everyone who's reading along, and especially to my beta-reader, **clafount**.

* * *

_Wright-Kay Building_

_03:30 PM Eastern Standard Time_

_26 February 2170_

_Detroit (Derelict Zone-unacknowledged), MI, UNAS, Terra, Sol_

The building might be falling down on the outside, its bricks more black than brown and almost all the windows smashed out before Kelsa was even born, but on the inside it's a fort of steel and muscle. Gotta be, since it's right in the middle of the _Garden_, where all the red roses grow. Even though she knows all the guards' faces, Kelsa's still gotta tug down the front of her shirt to show them her tattoo before they let her through every doorway. It pisses her off, 'cause she wouldn't even be here if she had a choice, but when Mister V asks you to come by his office, you don't say no. The place, when she finally gets there, looks almost the same as last time she was here, half a year back. There's a few more books on the shelves and the desk has more shit on it, but Kelsa keeps her eyes on Mister V. He looks almost the same, too...maybe a little heavier, maybe a couple more grey hairs. Still the same creamy shirts and open jackets, like he's the king of the Keys, instead of the donut-hole of East Michigan. He nods to Raff, who slinks up behind Kelsa and starts patting her down.

"Hey, I gotta piece," she tells the man when his hands get a little too friendly on her hips. "It's at my back." She don't break his wrist when he lets his fingers brush a little too low under her belt, but just 'cause Mister V wouldn't like that. Still, Raff goes to work on her thighs, and Kelsa shakes her head. "You don't get them hands off, I'll put your fingers outta joint one at a time."

Raff stiffens up, but Mister V nods a little, and the guard hands his boss Kelsa's gun. The older man still don't say nothin', he just looks the piece over for a minute, before he puts it down on his desk and flashes that smile of his. It's more yellow than white these days, but it still shines. "I am glad to see you took my advice, Kelsa," he tells her. "When last we spoke, I had worried that you would be stubborn."

The girl shrugs. "You been good to me," she says, and means it. "Thanks for givin' me the gun...and for takin' care of the fucker that robbed me." She can still feel the knife against her throat, and she's still just a little bit ashamed, sometimes, that she didn't fight back harder. Fucker didn't even give her a scar. "I'd never toss it, Mister Varga. I respect you too much."

"You were lucky that the man had but a knife," he says, the same thing he said six months ago. "But I must correct you," he goes on, but his voice stays light and easy. "You were making a delivery for me at the time; the vagrant who nearly cut your throat robbed _us_, not simply you." His eyebrows scrunch up as he looks at her, almost like she imagines her dad might've. "It was my fault you were in danger. Naturally, it was my responsibility to rectify the situation." He runs his finger along the side of the gun's barrel, right over the spot that shows it's been messed with, but he don't mention anything about it. Instead he looks back up at Kelsa, waiting, like he's afraid of sayin' something. "Gloria is dead," the man finally lets out. "An overdose," he explains, shaking his head again.

The news don't make Kelsa happy, but it ain't exactly a surprise, neither. She throws just one glance over her shoulder, to Raff, the one that took the older girl and strung her out and then turned her out for him after those first couple months. Raff don't even blink, so she turns back to Mister V and nods. "Thanks for tellin' me," she says, her eye twitching. "Is that what you wanted to see me for, sir?"

The older man looks close at her, like he's deciding something. Kelsa can't tell if it's a good something or a bad something, not yet. "You two were...no longer close, I believe," he tosses out.

The girl shakes her head. "Too many bad memories of the laundry," she says, shrugging. She ain't had to wash a single rag in almost eight years, and she never will again. "She tried dealin' with them with her nose and a needle. Ain't what I wanted for her, but I wasn't her momma."

"That is what I always like about you, Kelsa," Mister V lets on, giving her a crooked smile. He ain't called her any other way since she broke his nose; it's still a little crooked. Now she knows he coulda killed her, or had Raff do it. She was too stupid to be afraid, then. "You never linger on the past, on mistakes. You move on. For such a young child, that is remarkably wise." The girl don't know how wise it is, but she don't know any other way to be. Mister V stands up, slow, and turns his back on her. For a second she thinks Raff's gonna make a move, but the boss runs a finger over the back of one of his books. "How long have you been with the Reds, Kelsa?"

The girl blinks. "Seven years, nine months, and eighteen days since I walked into the old crib," she reads out, the numbers flashing underneath her eyelids. "Seven years, ten months, and three days since I got the rose."

That makes Mister V laugh, low in his chest. "Always, you surprise me. I could have Rafael look up the dates on the extranet and it would take him an hour to figure out what you just gave me in less than three seconds." He clicks his tongue, shaking his head and turning back toward the girl. "Tell me, Kelsa, can you read?"

She nods. "A little; I learned in the laundry, with the signs. Picked up a little more from watchin' old vids with Jay."

The boss twitches a little, but Kelsa can't tell why. He looks at Raff again and the man moves; instinct has Kelsa ready to elbow him and make a run for it, if she needs to, but instead the thug leaves the room and shuts the door behind him. Now there's just Kelsa and Mister V, with a desk between them. "You've been a good worker for me," the boss tells her. "Making deliveries, taking payments. Any discrepancies were always found before pickup or after drop off. You never once took any product or cash for yourself." Kelsa's stomach gets tighter, even though Mister V's smiling. Maybe _because_ Mister V's smiling. "Yet you're getting older," he points out, with a slow glance up and down her body; even under her long coat and layers, she shivers. "It is past time we found an altogether different job for you; it won't be safe for you to make deliveries for too much longer."

Kelsa's eyes narrow. "Mister Varga, if you think I'm gonna let Raff turn me into one of his girls-"

She doesn't know how she's gonna end that sentence, but the boss holds up a hand before she has to find out. "You misunderstand, Kelsa," he says. "I want you to learn how to read, and read for real." He turns back to one of the bookshelves and pulls out a thin, old book, small enough to fit down her pants. The man sets the book down right beside the gun he gave her six months ago, and then he clears some space on the desk, enough for a sheet of paper. "Do you know anything about coded messages?"

"A little," Kelsa answers, after a second. "Datapads got programs for that, don't they?" Jay's a lot better with that shit than Kelsa is, but he's taught her a little, enough to bring up some vids from the extranet.

Mister V takes out a pen and starts scratching out on the paper, but instead of left-to-right, he scrawls out a bunch of symbols the wrong way. Kelsa don't think she'd recognise them even if they wasn't upside down to her. "Cipher programs can be broken as easily as they're made," he snorts. "I am going to teach you a much older method of encryption...a way of keeping our messages a secret."

Kelsa's eyebrows scrunch up. "Why?" She looks from the paper up to the man scribbling on it. "Whatchu need me to read, for?" He glances up at her, and it takes her half a second to add, "Mister Varga?"

"Because I believe it's time we added a few thorns to your rose," he says, even and light. The girl's stomach drops out; Reds can get almost any kind of ink they want, but they can only change the rose whenever they kill somebody. Then they gotta put a thorn on the stem. She's seen some stems go all the way down to people's belly buttons before. "Tell me," Mister V asks, making her shake off the voice in her head, "have you ever had to use this gun?"

She knows that he already knows her answer, but she's gotta give it anyway. "I had to pop off a few shots a couple times, but I never hit nobody that I ever heard about," the girl admits.

The man's head dips down, once. "I imagine we would have learned otherwise, seeing how you've modified the pistol to make the bullets burn whatever they hit." That's something else Jay showed her; it makes the gun overheat quicker, so you can only get off six shots a minute instead of ten, but Jay says the trade's worth it. "I find myself in need of...a collector," Mister V goes on. "Someone who settles other people's debts to me, by persuading them to part with their cash...or by their blood, if they resist. Luckily, you are in need of a new job, and I believe you have what it takes to become one of my collectors, Kelsa."

The first thing the girl feels is relieved; if she's gotta choose between hurting strangers or fucking them to earn her keep, she ain't even gonna hesitate. But then she remembers the funny writing on the desk. "What about the books? What do they have to do with anything, sir?"

"Ahh, yes," Mister V rumbles, grinning. "Well, you see, the _puercos _have a nasty habit of gathering extranet messages. Let us say, for the sake of argument, that I send you a message that tells you that one of my dealers has been skimming a bit of sand," he offers. "And let us also say, hypothetically speaking, that this dealer winds up with a fiery bullet in his head. Now you know and I know that this could be a perfectly innocent coincidence, of course, but...the _puercos_, they might find out about the dealer's death, months later. Years, maybe. And they might also have that message archived somewhere…" He trails off and raises an eyebrow at her.

Kelsa hums, tilting her head. "So even if we coded it up, they'd still bring it back to you, Mister Varga." She almost says that pigs don't ever come south of Six Mile, not if they ain't got a reason, but then she figures out that a dead body and a message would give them reason enough.

"Exactly," the boss tells her. "That's why I give my collectors messages on paper." He spins the paper around and pushes it forward, waving for the girl to come closer. "It is called book code," he says. "The funny squiggles are numbers, written backwards, so most people could only read them if they used a mirror." Kelsa thinks that he must have done this before, because he's answering her questions as soon as they come up, before she can ask. "The numbers are always in groups of four," he keeps going. "The first number tells you the chapter of the book, the second number gives you which paragraph, the third number is the sentence, and the last number is the word in the sentence." He taps on the old book. "When you leave here today, you will take this note and this book with you. I have another copy of the book; when you've learned how to read the message, you will copy it back to me, using different numbers. Then I will know that you are ready to begin your work. Do you understand what you must do?"

It takes a second for the girl to sort everything out. "You want me to go through the book," she says, "and find different places that have the same words I get from the paper you made for me." The paper that she still can't figure out, even though it's supposed to be turned the right way. "How do I find out what the squiggles mean, Mister Varga?"

"I am sure you can figure it out," Mister V lets on, before he breathes a heavy sigh. "But I am afraid that your first job for me cannot wait, Kelsa," he says, and he sounds almost sad. "There is someone you must take care of," he tells her. "Tonight."

* * *

_Zug Island_

_11:42 PM Eastern Standard Time_

_26 February 2170_

_Detroit, MI, UNAS, Terra, Sol_

The skycar's a few years old, got a couple bullet holes and a broken back window, but it flies smooth enough to get them where they need to go without poking out above the donut-hole's rotting skyline. Jay stole it about a year ago from just outside the_ Line_, that ring of streets from Six Mile to Livernois on one side of the Detroit River and E. C. Row on the other. Outside the Line is Detroit, the donut, with builders and engineers and firefighters and cops and ambulances; inside the line is the donut-hole, where the lights don't work half the time and there ain't no heat in the winter and the law's whatever your boss says it is. The donut-hole's cut up into a dozen territories, but the Garden is right in the middle of it, and the Garden gets bigger every year. The skycar helps Kelsa and Jay get around the donut-hole without needing to pay other gangs to cut across their streets.

Tonight, Kelsa takes them outside the Line, just barely. Zug Island's neutral ground, just because there ain't nothing here that anybody wants, unless you like homeless people and old metal towers even more rusted-out than anything inside the donut-hole. "We're here," she says without needing to, when she sets the skycar down in the middle of the island. The lights from the rest of the city ain't too bad, here, and even through the cracked windshield they can see a couple hundred stars.

"You still ain't said what the point is, Kay," he drawls, but he's already looking up, settling back in his seat. It's too cold for them to go lay down outside, but this is good enough, for now.

Kelsa's throat's too thick for her to answer, so she swallows, hard. "Tell me about the sky, Jay," she says. The damned boy loves the stars, loves everything about them, even more than he loves circuit boards, even more than he loves her. Lots of people think they're fucking, which is fine by the both of them, since they're both gay. Jay says that outside the donut-hole that don't matter any, but inside it does, enough that they gotta pretend. It makes what she's gonna have to do even harder, and she's glad when he starts talking about Orion and Betelgeuse, even though she ain't listening.

"...I mean it, Kay," he whispers, almost like a prayer. "The whole galaxy's just full of shit, all kindsa people, and they need folks like us." He's talking about his dream again, his big plans to join the spacemen. "Folks that already seen what this big, bad world got to offer and laugh at it." Her eyes are closed, but she can tell when he finally looks at her because he shuts up for a minute. "Hey," he calls, reaching across the car and brushing a gloved knuckle under his cheek. "Why you cryin', Kay?"

The back of her throat's all dry, but she tries to swallow anyway. "Where'd you go three days ago?" The question's almost too quiet to hear over the whistling wind outside, but Kelsa can't ask it again.

The boy laughs, the dumbass, like he don't know how much trouble he's in. "When I took the car?" He flops back in his seat. "Went up north, outside the Line. I got into the office," he says, sounding proud. "I...wasn't gonna tell you, 'cause they said I had to wait 'til I was eighteen, but I talked to an Alliance recruiter." That answer drives a fist into her gut; she _knew_ it, earlier that day, when Mister V told her that he thought Jay was a snitch. She even told the boss that much, that Jay would never go to the cops...but Mister V made it all too clear, in his own fancy-talkin' way, that Jay was gonna die. It was up to Kelsa, he'd said without having to say, whether she wound up killing her friend or whether she died with him. Jay's still talking, ignorant, like he don't know that he's already dead. "Can you see it?" He whistles. "Just imagine...Serviceman 3rd Class John Shepard. Just two more years, and I'm outta here."

"Shut the fuck up, Jay," Kelsa growls, her eyes still closed up tight. "Just shut up."

"Wait," the boy says, not listening. "You're afraid of me leavin', aintcha? That you'll have to take care of Finch and Mary all by yourself?" Finch is just a year younger than Jay, but he's a tweaker, hardly able to keep his product and his stash separated. Mary's a scared kid, not really one of the Reds, at least not yet. Kelsa and Jay keep Raff and his boys from getting too close to her. Even though they're all about the same age and Kelsa's the youngest, she and Jay've been in the gang half their lives already. "Hey, it'll be alright," Jay keeps going, keeps talking. "It ain't for two years, and then you'll be able to get out in two more. I know you can do it, Kay."

The girl sucks in a breath and looks at her friend. She knows what she's gotta do; she knows that if she runs, if they take off together right now, that Finch and Mary won't see tomorrow night...and that they'll all die, all four of them, if she tries to go back for the kids. She ain't sure if Mister V knows the truth, if he's testing her, or if he really thinks that Jay's a problem...but it really don't matter, one way or another. "The boss give me a new job today," she says, after her eyes stop being cloudy. "Says he wants me to collect for him."

Jay looks confused by the quick change of subject, but he ain't scared, not yet. "You know that's just Mister V's way of saying _hitman_, right?" When she nods, he grins and shakes his head. "Honestly, I don't see it," he says, chuckling. "I mean, I could see you killin' someone if they was a threat, but-"

"Mister V thinks you went outside the Line to talk to some cops," Kelsa tells him, all in a rush. "You're s'posed to gimme my first thorn."

Nothing, for a whole heartbeat, and then another. Then he moves, but not for the old gun he keeps on him, the revolver, like they used to use before computers and circuit boards ever got invented. Instead he jumps out of the skycar and takes off running, and even though Kelsa's quicker than Jay, he's halfway to a rusty wreck before she's able to chase him. She still hasn't pulled out her gun, the gun that he taught her how to mod. The cold works in her favour, at least for Mister V's plan, because even after Jay dives behind some ancient barrels and other rusted clutter, Kelsa can see her friend's breath clouding. Growling, the girl finally yanks her piece, and she makes sure the rounds will burn nice and hot, just like Jay showed her.

"Please don't do this, Kay," the boy cries, a bigger cloud rising up from his hiding place. He's trapped in his hiding spot, pinned by a pile of twisted metal. "We can both get away...go back to the skycar and just drive. We can go somewhere warm, where Mister V'll never find us!"

She's tempted, more tempted than she even wants to admit. "You remember what you told me," Kelsa hisses, her eyes blurring, but she pretends it's just from her breath. "Nobody fucks with the Reds...we're a family, right? And you can't abandon family."

Three more puffs rise before it clicks for him. "Finch and Mary," he breathes. And then, after a second, "Why would he do this to us? We been good. We never did nothing wrong." He's whining now, like Kelsa used to do sometimes, back at the laundry.

"Maybe 'cause you tried to run, tried to get way the fuck up there," Kelsa guesses, swinging her left hand up to the sky even while she keeps her gun pointed at where those puffs are coming from. "Maybe just to see how much he can trust me." She takes a deep breath, feels her nose hairs freeze. A shiver rocks her body, but her arm and hand stay steady. "You gotta know I never wanted this, Jay," she tells him. But now that the decision's made, now that her way's locked in, Kelsa can't back down. "If I was you, I'd come out poppin', but you know he's gonna find you." Her stomach growls, like if she'd had any supper she'd throw it up, but still her hand's as steady as steel.

Jay's crying, she can tell by the way his breath-cloud's jittering. "Just promise me," he says, thick. "Promise me one thing, Kay."

Her teeth stay clamped together. "Yeah?" She manages to say, blinking to keep her eyes clear.

"Promise me you'll get out," he begs her. "Promise me that one day you'll get outta the donut-hole...outta the donut. Offa this rock." He swallows, and she can tell that he's looking up. "Promise me you'll see the stars up close, Kay. Promise me you'll do that for me."

Kelsa can't talk for a long time, but Jay don't say nothing else. "Okay," she answers, at last. "I promise."

"Love you, Kay," the boy hisses through his teeth. He jumps up, turning toward her as he goes, and his old gun goes off at the same time she pulls her own trigger. His bullet carves a trench in the outside of Kelsa's left shoulder, but her bullet hits him right below his left eye. It takes forever for her heart to tick over; in that forever, she sees the back of her best friend's skull spread out behind him. After another forever, another heartbeat, she smells charred meat. Then, just as he starts to fall, Kelsa feels the blinding flash of pain from her shoulder, and she hits her knees.

A strangled sound fills her ears, like a wild coyote dying slow, and it don't stop when she figures out it's her that's screaming. The gun's warm in her hand, steaming in the cold air, and suddenly she feels frozen right to her bones...so cold, except for her shoulder, where the hot metal touched her a few seconds before. A single splinter of a thought yanks at her, that she'll only feel warm if she can find another bullet, and she knows that her gun's bullets are warmer than most…

Gasping for breath, Kelsa throws the gun away, as hard as she can. She hears metal crash on metal somewhere far away, and she screams again, but she can't cry. All her tears are ice, and she's alone. Just her and them goddamned stars that Jay never shut up about. "Love you too, Jay," she chokes out, curling up in the snow, but she ain't shaking from the cold anymore.

* * *

_Wright-Kay Building_

_05:17 AM Eastern Standard Time_

_27 February 2170_

_Detroit (Derelict Zone-unacknowledged), MI, UNAS, Terra, Sol_

The guards are surprised to see her, but they believe the lie that Mister V told her to come back after she'd finished an assignment for him, no matter what time. She still rather wouldn't be here; she'd rather be drunk, or high, or dead. But after she made sure that Finch and Mary were alright, Kelsa came straight back to her boss's house.

He's in his office, just like before, and Raff is standing right there by the door when she walks through. The man moves to pat her down again, but as soon as his hand touches her, Kelsa drives her elbow into his side hard enough to crack his ribs. "You bitch," he spits, but she's already moving, already reaching for the shotgun he keeps in his coat.

Raff tries to grab onto her, but she's too quick, too determined. Before he can say anything else, before he can even blink, Kelsa has the barrel underneath his chin. The kickback digs into her ribs, but that's nothing to the blood and bone and brains that paint the boss's wall. The sound of the blast and the falling body draws the attention of a couple guards from the hallway, and they step in with their guns out, but Kelsa just tucks the shotgun into her own coat. "Needed another gun," she explains, looking back over her shoulder at Mister V. "Sir."

He looks at her, his icy eyes narrowed a little bit, but he don't look afraid. Instead, a little smirk twitches on his lips, and he gives her a little nod. "Make sure you keep up your reading," he tells her. "And work on your rose when you've sobered up. I would advise you not to add any more thorns to it until you've written to me, though."

Kelsa nods, once, and she stalks out of the building without another backward glance. The book's still tucked away on her, and the note, but she ain't looking at either one until she tells Finch and Mary that Jay ain't comin' home...and she can't do that without a lot of help from some things that won't let her remember the next few days.


	4. Ch 3: Mutatis Mutandis

Author's note: Thanks again to everyone who's reading, especially anyone who drops a review!

* * *

_ESA Recruitment Office_

_10:00 AM Eastern Standard Time_

_11 April 2172_

_Detroit, MI, UNAS, Terra, Sol_

The building's shittier than she thought it'd be, grey and blue with lots of cracks in the concrete on the outside, but the see-through glass doors open and close whenever anyone walks up to 'em, just like they're supposed to do. The doors in the donut-hole sure as fuck don't open just 'cause someone stands in front of 'em, but then again, that's probably saved Kelsa's life more than once. _Join Us!_, the flashing pictures in front of the building scream, in between shots that are literally other-worldly; pictures from moons and planets from all across the galaxy, places Jay would've been able to name in a heartbeat, black and grey and blue and green and red and orange. Each picture has happy-looking humans, most of 'em white, all in well-washed uniforms. If she didn't know no better, Kelsa might think being an Alliance marine would be just about the most boring thing in the whole goddamned galaxy.

But she does know better. These last two years, she's paid more attention to life outside the Line, outside the donut, outside the solar system. Turns out that the galaxy's filled with pirates and thugs and drug-runners and assassins, and there's places that make the Garden seem like...well, like a fuckin' garden. If she's honest with herself, Kelsa ain't entirely sure she's the right kinda person to send into all that mess. But Mister Varga's starting to get a little suspicious, and maybe a little paranoid, and it won't be safe for her to stay with him too much longer...which means that she's gonna have to run somewhere, and Kelsa can't think of anywhere better than out in the deep black. Some of the Reds wander up as far as Ten Mile now, and the boss's gone to calling them the _Tenth Street Reds_ as a marker of his ambition-to run his business outside the Line, to show everyone else in the donut-hole who's really in charge-but the man's reach probably ain't ever gonna get past Pluto. There's also that promise that she made to Jay, two winters ago. Kelsa don't make promises hardly ever, but she's gonna try and keep that one.

So Kelsa takes a breath and steps up to those sliding doors. They whisper open, and she sees men and women running around, not paying her any mind at all. A single step into the room sets an alarm to screaming, though, and Kelsa jumps without thinking; she dives over a couch, kicking it over as she goes, and jams her shoulder against the upturned underside. Her big knife's in her hand before she can blink, and for a second she wonders if stashing her shotgun was a mistake after all, especially when a couple of not-happy-at-all soldiers start talking with the tense confidence that says they both have guns pointed at her. "Come out from behind that sofa," one of them barks. "Hands where we can see them!"

The girl does no such thing. Instead she hikes her buck knife higher. From what she remembers of the room, there's a hall she can duck down, maybe a room with a window she could bust through before the fuckers catch her.

"Somebody shut that thing the hell up," comes another voice, and Kelsa tenses when its owner steps around the couch-turned-barricade. He's an old man, probably almost fifty, with grey in the sides of his bushy hair. But he don't have a gun, and he looks like he ain't scared of Kelsa's knife, even if he stays a dozen feet from her. "Put that down, kid," he tells her. "You're scaring Corporal van Dyne and Serviceman Woo." As soon as the noise cuts off, Kelsa's heart slows down, and she lowers her buck knife down to the floor. In the donut-hole, when you hear alarms go off, you run and you hide or you get ready to fight. "That was a damned fast move," the man goes on, looking from the window to the couch and then back over his shoulder at the wall. "Limiting exposure to the outside and the hall, but giving yourself room to manoeuvre if you get flanked." He's almost mumbling, talking to himself.

A woman's voice sounds from across the room. "Sir, should I call the police?"

_You'll be dead and I'll be gone before they get here_, Kelsa almost says, but she bites her tongue. The old man turns his blue-grey eyes on the girl, but when he speaks, it's clearly to the woman she can't see. "I doubt that will be necessary, Claire." The bastard actually _smirks_ at her. "My name is Major Tom Kincaide," he tells her, and then chuckles, like that's supposed to be funny. "And don't bother, I've heard about _ground control_ a million times."

Silence hangs between them for a couple seconds, before she realises he probably wants to know who the knife-wielding couch-stomper in his office building is. "Kelsa," she offers, and then waits a heartbeat before deciding on a last name, then and there. "Shepard." The girl swallows, her heart hitching for an entirely different reason than adrenaline. "I'm Kelsa Shepard," she says a little louder. "I'm here to join up...if I ain't fucked that up, that is."

"That remains to be seen," the major answers, still smirking. "How 'bout you kick that knife over this way and then fix the sofa back like it was before the metal detector went off, and then we can go back and talk about that." He stands there, waiting, and Kelsa slides the buck knife across the carpet. Now she's glad she stashed the gun, since she's pretty sure she ain't gettin' that knife back. Warily, the girl peeks up from her hiding spot; the two guards are back beside the door, their pistols at their hips, but they both eye her openly as she pulls the couch back onto its legs.

By the time Kelsa turns around, the knife's gone, almost like it didn't even exist. The old man, Major Kincaide, jerks his head for her to follow him. She stalks, her boots whispering on the carpet, eyes darting around the room and the hall. Almost without having to think about it, the girl looks for cover in the main room, checks to see how easy it'd be to break through the doors in the hall, scans for possible ways out. The major takes her all the way to the back room of the hall, past at least two elevators and a dozen doors on each side. It looks like his own personal office, which Kelsa knows is right when she reads his name cut into a strip of plastic on the desk. Other than that, it looks a hell of a lot like Mister V's office; there're lots of old books here, a couple potted plants, and no windows at all. She's pretty sure there's more than one way out, though, even though it doesn't look like it. Something tells her that Major Kincaide likes his own exits.

"Close the hatch and have a seat," he says smoothly, moving to the big chair behind the desk. While the girl elbows the door closed and moves into one of the smaller chairs in front of him, the man holds up his left arm and it starts glowing orange. He types on orange keys for a couple seconds, and a light shoots out from his wrist into her eye; it's gone before she can blink, but that doesn't stop her cheek from twitching. "Hmm," the major grumbles, his smirk getting looser, almost a frown. "What'd you say your name was, again?"

She swallows hard. "Kelsa," she says. "Kelsa...Shepard." While she's talking, the man makes his arm stop glowing, and he's definitely frowning now.

"That's curious," the major lets on. "That name sounded a little familiar to me...the last name, anyway," he tells her. "Funny thing is, last I heard it, it came from one of my recruiters. Said he had a street-rat kid that could hack into any system he came across, and wanted to put his skills to work for humanity." He leans forward, putting his hands together. "Would you happen to know anything about that, Miss...Shepard?"

A hollow wants to open up in her chest, just behind her heart, but Kelsa won't let it. "He was my brother," she says. _As good as_, she doesn't.

Major Kincaide raises an eyebrow at her. "Was?"

"He died," she explains. _I killed him. I loved him, but I killed him_. "Couple years back."

"I'm sorry to hear that," the man offers, but she can tell he don't mean it, really. "But I don't really think he was your brother," he goes on. "As I recall, his file listed him as caucasian with blue eyes. Those eyes of yours are green, but otherwise you don't even look mixed, kid." He shakes his head. "Most importantly, though, my omni-tool ran your biometric identification. Would you care to guess what it had to tell me a minute ago?"

Kelsa's stomach gets tight, but she doesn't hesitate. "It says my name's Ruth Jackson," she admits, her mouth drying up. "Also prob'ly says I went missing outta Saint Mary's Orphanage about ten years back."

Major Kincaide inclines his head, his office light shining through the thin hair at his temples. "Do you dispute those facts, miss?"

"Yes, sir," she answers. "I do." The man nods for her to go on. "There was a girl at that orphanage that the nuns called Ruth Jackson," she explains. "A black girl that grew up under the ground and worked six days a week in the laundry, and spent the last day praying to a god that never listened." Her cheek twitches. "But my momma called me Kelsa before they took me away from her, and Jay was as much a brother as I ever coulda wanted after I got out."

The major makes a low grumbling noise and laces his fingers together. "There are some things it's best not for me to know," he says. "From what I've seen, you know how to handle yourself in a fight...I wouldn't be surprised if you know how to use a gun." He raises his right hand to cut off any answer she might give, and then he makes his left forearm glow again. "According to the system, Ruth Jackson's still a minor, still listed as a resident of the orphanage. I doubt you'd learn moves like you showed off in the lobby out there if you walked out of Saint Mary's earlier today, and from what it sounds like, you've been out for long enough for them to file a missing person's report if they were going to already...so it looks like there's been some kind of mix up with the Vital Records Office." The man looks at her again, through the see-through orange screen that's popped up out of his arm. "I do have some questions, though, and you'd damned well better be honest about them if you want me to fix this problem, Miss Shepard."

Kelsa doesn't understand what he's saying at first, but as he keeps going, she realises that he isn't getting ready to kick her out of his office. Part of her thinks he could be buying time for cops to come, but at this point, she'll take her chances-she ain't afraid of prison, and if she gets dragged back to the orphanage, she sure as shit won't even need her knife to get out again. The girl nods. "Alright, sir. What do you wanna know?"

The man holds her eyes, steady as a rock. "Why are you here?"

It doesn't even take a heartbeat for her to come back. "I made Jay a promise, just before he died," she tells the major. "He always wanted to go out and see space. Talked about it all the time. When he didn't make it, he...I told him I'd get out, see the stars for him." She ain't cried since that night, not even once.

That answer makes the old man's eyebrows twitch up, and he takes a couple seconds. "You really did care about him, huh?"

Kelsa nods, swallowing, but her eyes stay desert-dry. "Still do, sir." She takes a breath and keeps going. "I can fight, and I ain't afraid to die. If I stay here, it prob'ly won't be too long 'til I do." The girl looks back over her shoulder, to the hallway and the lobby. "I know them posters you got hangin' out there is bullshit; there's bad places, a lot of 'em, and they need people who can stand on the ground when other people just wanna run away." Major Kincaide's frowning again, but not like he's mad, and he doesn't speak up when she stops to take another breath. "I don't need you to send me to school or give me a vacation," she says. "I'm already a soldier; I just want somethin' better to fight for." Better than grown-ups that use kids, either to wash clothes or to soak them in blood.

"Soldiers take orders," the major points out, his head tilting. "You think you can do that, Miss Shepard?"

Forty-seven thorns say that she can; the stem of her rose has crawled over her breastbone where the skin is thinnest, all the way down to her belly-button. She learnt to read over the last couple years, and her little room back in the Garden has a few books besides the ones that Mister V uses for the coded messages he's sent her every couple weeks. "Even inside the Line, there's rules," she tells the major. "If I couldn't do what I was told, I'd already be dead."

"That's good, Shepard," Major Kincaide grunts, and the girl notices that he's stopped calling her _Miss_. She ain't sure what that means, but he's not frowning anymore. "I think I have a deal for you," he goes on. "If you're interested." Kelsa nods, and his smirk comes back. "It sounds like you might be mixed up with some bad people, but I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, Shepard...with a couple of conditions. One, you've gotta pass a physical exam, which means no drugs in your system." It only takes another second for the girl to nod again; she thought they'd check for that, so she's spent the last month or so steering clear of everything but liquor. It ain't been easy, but Kelsa keeps her promises. "Two," the man continues, making her blink. "You'll have to pass an aptitude test that's going to assess all of your skills, in theory and in practice. You'll need to pull top marks in combat tactics to even have a shot. Last, if you get that far, you're going to get fitted with an omni-tool. That omni-tool's going to have several monitoring programs attached to it. If within the first eighteen months you're caught communicating with anyone you shouldn't, if you're caught breaking the law, if you have even one shoelace out of place or if you try to tamper with your surveillance in any way, you will be court martialed." His face is blank while he talks, but it sounds like he's made this little speech before. "That means no drugs stronger than coffee, no disobeying any order from your superiors, and cutting any and all ties with anyone that you might be working with at the moment."

Kelsa nods one more time; she knows that red sand's gotta come from somewhere, and if she was Mister V, having a soldier that could fetch her some might be something she'd try to make happen. But she's got no intention of ever seeing Mister V again; she'll just have to trust Finch's word that he can take care of Mary. "I understand," the girl says. "I'll have eyeballs on me all the time. I got no problem with any of that, sir." When the alternative is getting shot in the back of the head, she can take being watched. At least for awhile.

"Okay," Major Kincaide grunts, tapping on his arm some more. "I'm gonna do you a favour, Shepard," he tells her. "If you shit on that favour, I will personally see that you spend the rest of your days breaking big rocks down into smaller rocks on some God-forsaken asteroid six months from the closest mass relay, you got me?"

"I got you, sir," Kelsa answers, finally letting a little bit of hope trickle into her chest.

He gives her a tight nod. "Okay," he repeats. "Let's say Vital Records made a mistake, eighteen years ago to the day, and you accidentally got registered under some other girl's bio. You were really born Kelsa Shepard...that's with a 'K', right?" Kelsa has no idea, but he takes her shrug for agreement and types onto the glowy keys on his arm. "Alright...so you're Kelsa Shepard, born in Ferndale on April 11th, 2154. You've just decided to leave West Oak Secondary School to sign up with the Alliance on the occasion of your eighteenth birthday. Don't blink again." She doesn't, and another flash of light pulses into her eye. "All done; that'll keep, even if you wash out between now and the end of basic training."

The girl does blink, now, and she doesn't know what to say for a minute. "Thanks, Major Kincaide," Kelsa finally tells him. "I won't let you down, sir." Part of her can't believe this is actually happening; she expected to wind up arrested, or worse, when she left the Garden a couple of hours ago. But now it seems like she might be able to keep her promise, after all.

The major barks a laugh. "Don't mention it, literally. Item number four of your agreement is to not breathe a word of this again. You're Shepard; you've been Shepard your whole life. Make up whatever story you need to get by, but stick to it. You mention my name or what I did, and it's off to an asteroid belt in the Hawking Eta cluster, kid."

She doesn't know where the fuck that is, but she gets the point. "Understood," she says again.

He jerks his head to the door, behind her. "Take the elevator on your right up to the fourth floor. Tell Dr. Kenichi that you're enlisting under the Youth Initiative Programme, and she'll take you from there. And Shepard," he says, while she's standing up. "Good luck."

"Thank you, sir." Kelsa slips out of the man's office, her buck knife forgotten; even though she's killed almost fifty people and roughed up a couple hundred, she feels a little nervous while she's waiting for the elevator. The steel walls buzz around her as the elevator doors close and she jabs the fourth-floor button hard enough to hurt her thumb, but the girl doesn't step out of the box when the doors finally ding open. Her feet feel like cinder blocks for a second, just long enough for the doors to ding again, but Kelsa manages to jump through before they close all the way.

Up here's another hallway. Kelsa follows the signs that say _Medical Reception_, and she finds an older lady with glasses sitting behind a desk, tapping away on a real keyboard. The girl stands there for almost a minute, but the woman doesn't seem to even notice she's there until Kelsa kicks the front of the desk. "Major told me to come see some doctor," she says, over the woman's scared complaints.

"You must be a new recruit," the woman sniffs, after eyeballing Kelsa for a second. "Dr. Kenichi will be with you in a moment. If you'll just have a seat."

Kelsa doesn't move. "I ain't got a moment, lady. You ain't gonna have too many more, neither, 'less I see this doctor." She leans forward, putting an elbow down on the desk. "Major said I had to see her...he didn't say nothing about seeing you."

The sitting woman's mouth opens and closes so fast that the fat underneath her chin wobbles, but before she can say anything, another woman talks from a doorway deeper in the office. "It is alright, Mrs. Harris. Major Kincaide just forwarded a report."

Kelsa looks up to see a dark-haired woman with painted lips, shorter than her, Japanese or Korean. Kelsa can't tell which, and she knows better than to guess, or to ask. "You the doctor?" The woman's wearing a white coat over fancy black clothes, heels higher than Kelsa's ever seen, which must mean she's _real_ short.

"I'm _a_ doctor," the woman answers, smirking, like she's clever. "You may call me Dr. Kenichi. You must be Shepard." Kelsa blinks, then nods, and the doctor's smirk turns into a smile. "Excellent," she says. "Come with me." The girl follows Kenichi back into a maze of white rooms...white walls, white ceilings, white floors. White paper on the beds, white charts on the walls with black letters. White scales. Whiter and cleaner than Kelsa's ever seen before. The woman in the white coat takes Kelsa all the way to the very back, to a room that looks just like all the others they just passed. The doctor shuts the door and draws the blinds over the room's only window. "Please take off your clothes and remove any weapons that the front gate might have missed," Kenichi tells her, already messing with a datapad.

Kelsa shrugs out of her old trench coat, with its ripped hem and pockets full of holes. She hesitates for a second, looking over her shoulder at the doctor. "You ain't scared of me?"

Rose-red lips twitch. "I am not," Kenichi answers, still not looking up from the datapad. "It's been a long time since I've had to disarm and disable a recruit, but I assure you that I am quite capable."

That makes Kelsa curious, a little, but she doesn't wanna get thrown out of the building. "Alright," she says, and instead of palming the shiv she keeps in her boot, Kelsa tosses it onto the raggedy coat before she pulls off the rest of her clothes. The air's chilly, but she doesn't shiver; she ain't really shivered since the night Jay died, either, no matter how cold it gets.

"Step onto the scale," Kenichi says, her heels clicking over the hard floor. Kelsa moves to the white platform and stands still, keeping her eyes on a picture of the inside of a white man's ear. The doctor hums to herself and fiddles with her own omni-tool thing. "Hundred sixty-five centimetres, eighty-seven kilograms. Five percent body fat. Strange."

"What's strange about it?" Kelsa asks, blinking, not looking to the doctor. Her hands ball up tight beside her.

Another second of tapping passes before the doctor answers. "Generally such a high muscle density suggests genetic modification, but the scale detects nothing."

Kelsa shrugs. "I run a lot," she says. _And fight a lot, and carry a lotta dead weight around_, she doesn't say. "That a problem, doc?"

"Not at all," Kenichi tells her, without a pause this time. "If anything, it'll make the standard gene therapy that much more effective, if you make it that far." The doctor waves her glowing arm at the scale, and her omni-tool makes a gentle noise. "Nervous system shows signs of mild post-natal eezo exposure, but there's no biotic potential," she says, and Kelsa can't tell whether that's supposed to be a good thing or not. "And you don't have any narcotics or steroids in your system, so we can proceed to the eye exam and dental screening. If you pass those, we'll find you some new clothes and burn off that ink."

The girl feels her stomach knot up, and she turns more fully toward the short woman. "Soldiers can't have tattoos, doc?"

"Of course they can," the doctor says. "Just not the kind that suggest criminal affiliation." Kenichi's dark eyes sweep down Kelsa's torso, over her long-stemmed rose. "Especially not the kind that let people know you are a killer. Reads very badly in your file."

The woman's smile keeps Kelsa from getting too scared, but there's something dark in it that also makes the girl more curious than ever. "Ain't you trying to make me into a killer yourself?"

Kenichi's eyebrows lift up. "Right...but you're only supposed to kill who your superiors tell you to. Killing anybody else is generally frowned upon." She glances at Kelsa's left arm, high, near her shoulder. "You can keep the bluejay, though. It covers the scar quite nicely."

Kelsa's more relieved than she wants to think about, and she lets her fists relax. "Alright, then," she says, stepping off the scale. "Let's do these tests."


	5. Ch 4: There's Whiskey In The Jar

Author's note: Thanks so much for reading along, especially everybody who's followed, favourited, or reviewed! And I really do have to thank my splendiforously awesome beta-reader, **clafount**, for all of the wonderful help and support!

* * *

_Bratislav Szibeck Hall_

_2300 Zulu_

_2 June 2173_

_Nexus Campus, Officer Candidate School, Arcturus Station, Arcturus_

Bunk beds. Goddamn bunk beds were almost the end of Kelsa back in Brazil; too many years spent at the top bunk in the laundry gave her nightmares in those first few weeks in the Recruit Training Depot. Back-talking drill instructors, taking the bait of other soldiers who tried picking fights with her, and drinking too much nearly got Kelsa washed out of the RTD, but it was those long nights in the bunk beds that made her re-think the whole business of joining up in the first place. But somehow, someway, Kelsa hung on through basic training for the two full months, and she took the rank of Serviceman 3rd Class, with vocation code G1, for Ground Combat Specialist. _Those're the ground-pounders_, Operations Chief Megala told her, upon graduation. _Only N sees more action_. He also said the Villa takes more Gs than any of the other letters in the alphabet, and every marine wants to go to the Villa, to N-School. Special Forces.

That was eleven months and twelve days ago. Now Kelsa's a G5, Serviceman 1st Class. She hasn't killed anyone in over a year, but her aptitude scores and her top marks in training exercises-Kelsa's never finished less than third place, and she's flat-out won three out of the five manoeuvres she's been on so far-got her out here, to the Nexus. Somebody up the chain's pulling her up, probably Kincaide, tugging at her to become an officer; she wanted to say no when her omni-tool pinged with the offer to go to OCS, but Jay was there in her head, whispering in the back of her thoughts, and so Kelsa's here, trying to make the best of things.

At the moment, that means making peace with another fucking bunk bed. She's already spent one night on the thing, in the bottom bunk, but she didn't sleep even a minute. Now she's naked, hanging by her knees from the foot of the top bunk, her arms crossed over her chest with a 20-kilo dumbbell in each hand. Some folks still count sheep to try and go to sleep; Kelsa's counting sit-ups, trying to make herself sweaty and tired enough to pass out without remembering the laundry. _One ninety-seven, one ninety-eight_-

The dorm's door opens with a muted _hiss_, and the doorway's filled with a tall red-headed white woman, freckled, maybe twenty-two years old. She steps into the room, distracted by a rucksack. The low light catches on a gold cross around her throat.

In that instant, Kelsa unfolds from her crunch, planting her weights onto the carpeted floor and backflipping onto her feet. Just a heartbeat later she's turned around, her right hand at the strange woman's throat, the left still holding onto one of those heavy weights. With a hard-enough swing, it could cave somebody's skull in, easy. "The fuck are you?" The shorter woman barks, but in her mind she hears a little girl whimpering, begging the cross-wearing grey ladies to let her off of her bunk bed. The woman doesn't whimper, though; instead she grabs Kelsa's wrist and nearly pops one of the bones out of place. At the same time, pain explodes in Kelsa's knee from the heavy sack hitting her leg, and she almost drops her free weight onto her left foot. Only by jumping back can the soldier dodge the metal, and she crouches, but the stranger doesn't move to attack. She starts talking, but her words are meaningless to Kelsa, at least for now, because she's talking in the made-up language that the Alliance calls _Galactic_. Kelsa'll have to learn it soon, if she wants to finish OCS, but right now she can't speak a word. "Talk English if you can," the soldier tells her, slowly standing up from her crouch. "Please."

"I'm Siobhan," the woman coughs, massaging her neck. "2nd Lieutenant-Cadet Siobhan Leigh Riley, but most people call me 'Lee'," she goes on, her words coloured oddly even though Kelsa can hear them properly now. "Who'n the blue fuck are you?" Rather than look afraid, or even mad, the woman's eyes-every bit as green as Kelsa's-skirt up and down Kelsa's sweat-slick body, and the stranger doesn't look like she minds what she sees.

"Kelsa Shepard," the soldier reports, snapping off a salute, since the other woman's technically an officer, even though her presence here means she's just an officer in training, just the same as Kelsa. "Serviceman 1st Class." When the woman only nods and doesn't tell her to stand at ease, Kelsa takes her suspicions as fact, and relaxes. "Fuck kinda name is _Shuvawn_, anyway?" Kelsa asks, pronouncing the name as close to how she heard it as she can manage.

The other woman snickers, even so. "It's Irish," she explains with a shrug. "I'm from Kilkenny. You gonna get dressed and ask my why I'm here?"

Kelsa shakes her head and moves to pick up her dumbbells. The one she dropped from shoulder-height leaves a deep impression in the carpet, but the soldier pays no attention as she climbs back onto the foot of the well-secured bunk bed. "You interrupted my set," she grunts, laying back until she's almost flush with the bed's posts. "You my roomie, Shiv?" _One ninety-nine_.

"...I am," the woman, Siobhan, answers after a couple of seconds. "Do you often go from attacking people to giving them nicknames in the space of five minutes?"

_Two hundred_. "Nope." _Two hundred and one_. "Saw your necklace, had a bad memory. Ain't happened in a while." _Two hundred and two_. "Sorry."

Kelsa hears Siobhan rustling around the little room, probably unpacking. Books, by the sound of it. "I guess that's alright, but now you've got me curious-"

"Don't ask," Kelsa talks over her. "Not 'less you wanna see how quick I can move when you really piss me off." _Two hundred and five…_each rep's coming slower, burning deeper into her stomach, her arms, her legs. Kelsa doubts she'll make it to two-ten. "So you musta joined up after college," the soldier guesses, trying to distract herself from the pain that's supposed to be distracting her from the bad memories. "Made you an officer straight out the gate."

"Got an MA in Classics from University College Dublin, but reading about ancient heroes and warriors made me want to get some first-hand experience," the Irish woman says with a laugh. "You join up direct from secondary?"

_Two hundred and eight_. "Something like that," the soldier hisses. "Got tapped a couple weeks ago after eleven months active. Just got here yesterday; they say I'll get a stripe in a couple years." She counts out two-ten in her head and then repeats her backflipping trick, but this time she leaves both weights at the foot of the bottom bunk. "Know when you're getting outta here, Shiv?"

Siobhan's sitting at the desk with a row of books behind her, all of them old, and only a couple in English. "Fourteen months, if I don't cock it up too badly." She rolls those impossibly-green eyes, a bit of pink rising up underneath her freckles. "I can't believe I missed the orientation!"

From the way the woman glances at Kelsa and then away again, the soldier doesn't think she's just blushing from being a day late. Kelsa tries not to think too much into it, and she doesn't let her own eyes dangle too long on the chest underneath Siobhan's necklace. "You've got a couple moves on you, for someone who spends all day reading," Kelsa points out. She rubs her wrist where Siobhan nearly dislocated it, but doesn't move otherwise. "Learn those in basic?"

"No," Siobhan admits, still not looking straight at the sweaty soldier. "I, ahh...took some martial arts after I decided to join the Alliance. So I could be prepared."

Kelsa grunts a laugh. "Gotta study for everything, huh?" When the other woman returns the laugh, Kelsa gets into the bottom bunk and settles under the covers. "Don't touch me while I'm sleepin'," she warns Siobhan.

"Unless I want to show off more of my moves," the officer-in-training points out, and the two share another chuckle before Kelsa's heavy muscles drag her down into darkness.

* * *

_Azure Hotel_

_1930 Zulu_

_24 December 2173_

_Nos Astra (ashore), Soarse, Illium, Tasale_

"You're trying to get us killed," Kelsa breathes, halfway to a growl. She can speak Galactic now, which is good, 'cause that's what her standard-issue Alliance implant's set to translate everything into. If she was Jay, Kelsa could probably have re-wired the damned thing to give her translations in English, but she'd probably just wind up frying her nerves if she tried to fool with it herself. But the simple soldier has mastered the common tongue of the Alliance well enough to catch snatches of conversation from aliens huddled in the shadows, and she knows that this place isn't safe for a pair of humans who haven't been farther than Arcturus. Siobhan sure as hell ain't helping; she's wearing a fancy dress, red and green for the holidays, and if they weren't walking over a bridge full of aliens on a planet outside Alliance space, Kelsa would probably be looking forward to tearing her out of it, one stitch at a time; as it is, the soldier makes sure her standard-issue pistol and shotgun are on display, holstered at her hip and the small of her back, respectively. She's in blue-grey Alliance fatigues and boots, but the longer they spend on this planet, the more she wishes it were a hardsuit. "This was a bad idea, Shiv."

The other woman snorts, and even though Kelsa can't see, she knows that Siobhan's rolling her eyes. "You worry too much, Irish-Eyes," Siobhan says. "We're almost to the hotel and nobody's attacked us yet. Not even a batarian."

"Yet," Kelsa repeats, keeping her green eyes sharp. There were a couple of the four-eyed bastards at the shuttleport, gabbling away in a dialect too obscure for Kelsa's translator to pick up reliably. They looked different even than on vids, with all those holes in their heads and their fuzzy jowls, but Kelsa decided before she came that she wouldn't bother anyone unless they bothered her, first. _At least you can see their fucking eyes_, Kelsa thinks to herself, as they near the building that's supposed to be their destination. _Bet volus and quarians can play a decent game of poker, behind those masks and __all_. The thought is snatched away from her mind as they round a parked skytruck and nearly trip over a trio of blue-skinned women in black leather that somehow manages to hide too much and not enough at the same time. Kelsa's caught between stumbling and staring, and she opts to shoulder-check the truck rather than one of the asari.

"Watch it," the asari in the middle clips, and for just a second, Kelsa hears a challenge in the alien's voice, an echo of a turf war the soldier left behind back in Detroit. But the second passes and the three asari stalk off, too focused on their unknown goal to bother with a couple of humans.

"Didja see that?" Siobhan sighs, like she was holding her breath before. "They were _gorgeous_!"

The Irish woman saunters up toward the hotel's entrance and Kelsa can't do anything but follow. "They were dangerous," she says, but she knows that's not the same as arguing Siobhan's point. "Probably deadlier than anyone you've seen so far."

"I doubt that," Siobhan laughs, shooting a knowing look over her bare shoulder that fixes Kelsa's stare for a couple of heartbeats. "Now come on. This's my first Christmas away from home; I'll not let you ruin it, Irish-Eyes."

Kelsa grits her teeth and hurries up the stairs, always a half-step behind the other woman; the holiday's meaningless to her, as meaningless as the trinket around Siobhan's neck, as meaningless as a half-day out of the laundry like she spent at least two Christmases as a kid, as meaningless as a whole day to practice hand-to-hand without half the fucking barracks riding her ass for taking too long on the mat, like she spent the last one. She doesn't know why Siobhan wanted to take her to this place for two nights, when the woman's spent the last twenty-three years with songs and food and bible stories with her family, but Kelsa doesn't ask, either. Too scared of what Siobhan might say. Siobhan, who still doesn't know anything about the laundry, who only ever tried to talk to her about Jesus once, when they were both _really_ drunk, so drunk that Kelsa can pretend that she doesn't remember, and Siobhan can pretend to believe her. Kelsa stays quiet, eyeing the large entryway warily, pinpointing cover and potential threats almost without thinking about it, all the way to the large reception desk.

The nearest asari behind the desk smiles expansively at the two of them. "Welcome to Azure," the alien says in a cheerful tone. "Nos Astra's premiere luxury resort and hotel. How can I assist you this morning?"

It's evening, Zulu time, but Zulu time doesn't count for shit on Illium. Kelsa's not even sure how long the days are on this planet, but before she can ask, Siobhan takes charge. "We have a reservation for two, under _Riley_," the officer-cadet pronounces, and then spells out her name to help the asari track it down.

"Ahh, right," the receptionist says, turning her smile back onto Siobhan. "We have a mid-level suite booked for forty Terran hours. Your luggage has already been placed." She strokes a few keys, and both Siobhan and Kelsa's omni-tools chirp. "There, both of you have been granted access to room 170-12, as well as to the spa, lounge, and buffet on floor 150. Enjoy your stay at Azure!"

Siobhan thanks the blue-tinted woman and leads the way to a bank of elevators. "Looks like you should've brought some nice clothes after all," she says when the doors ding open. "Toldja they wouldn't lose my bag."

"These _are_ my nice clothes," Kelsa answers, pulling at the collar of her not-too-rumpled shirt. Her tags rustle, caught between the thick blue of her fatigues and her lighter grey undershirt. "You'll just have to deal with me wearing them for three days." After a half-second's jolt, the elevator's as smooth and silent as if it weren't moving at all, and the two soldiers keep needling each other under their breath for the thirty seconds or so it takes to cover a hundred and seventy floors. It isn't another minute to the suite, and when they step inside, Kelsa can't pretend that she's not impressed; it's all one room, but enormous, especially compared to their bunk on Arcturus. The bed is on a raised platform by the window-wall, which looks out over Illium, giving them a view of the edge of Nos Astra and the untamed landscape that spreads out below and away from the city. Something about the purple hills makes Kelsa's chest clench tight. "Now _that's_ gorgeous, Shiv."

"You're not wrong," Siobhan agrees, and she heads over to the countertop where her one and only suitcase has been placed with near-military precision. After a couple of seconds, the woman lets out a cry of triumph, pulling out both a smaller handbag and a tall bottle of Jameson whiskey. "I'll go fix my face. Catch." She tosses the bottle, which Kelsa snatches automatically. "Find a fridge to stick that in, will you?"

The soldier takes another glance around the room while Siobhan heads for the latrine, and Kelsa has to try two shelves before she finds a chilled cabinet; it's already stocked with fine bottles of wine and whiskey, all human, most made before the First Contact War. "Exactly how much you paying for this place, Riley?" Kelsa calls once she's found a home for the warm whiskey, and she follows the sound of Siobhan's answer to the half-opened bathroom door.

"More than I can afford," Siobhan admits. "But I told you not to worry about it. We're probably not going to have another Christmas together, so it'll be worth it, as long as you don't cock it up, Shepard." Kelsa leans against the open doorway, watching the other woman paint her face like an artist, retouching her eyelashes and lips, making her cheeks glow a pale cream, brushing the freckles off of the front of her neck. It makes Kelsa's stomach twist, and her lips turn down into a frown. Siobhan's eyes catch on her face in the mirror, and the woman hesitates. "What's wrong?"

Kelsa blinks and makes her face go blank, shoving down the odd feeling. "It's nothing," she says. "You heading down to the lounge?"

For just the blink of an eye Siobhan looks hurt, like she wants to say something, but then Kelsa sees her own training kicking in and she smirks. "_We_ are heading down to the lounge, Serviceman Shepard," the lieutenant-cadet tells her. "And you'd better be on your best behaviour, soldier."

The cool authority in Siobhan's tone is kilometres better than it was six months ago, and Kelsa has no trouble standing straighter under the woman's stare. "Understood, ma'am," she clips.

"Good," Siobhan says, turning back to the mirror for a couple of touch-ups. "We'll move in two minutes, unless you want me to touch you up, serviceman."

"Don't push it, lieutenant," Kelsa warns her, but she steps back from the door before the older woman can say anything else. It takes Siobhan the full two minutes to come out of the bathroom, but not a single second more, and Kelsa has to admit that the woman looks nice. Better than nice, really. _Nicer than Gloria_-Kelsa cuts the thought off with a sniff, and lets a hungry smirk cross her lips. "You ready to drink?"

"You betcher arse I am, Irish-Eyes," Siobhan grunts, with a smirk of her own. "Think they'll have proper whiskey down there?"

"Only one way to find out, Shivs," Kelsa barks, and she takes the lead into the hallway this time. The elevator has a couple of guys in it, humans, civilian. Rich. One of them tries talking to Siobhan, at least until he notices Kelsa's guns and her less-than-sunny disposition, and the few seconds left on the ride down to the lounge's floor pass in silence. The Alliance marines get off, and the rich boys don't, which suits Kelsa just fine.

The lounge is easy to find, it turns out, even for humans. _Maybe especially for us_, Kelsa wonders, since the room's half-filled with other men and women from Alliance space, and the rest are asari. Not a single krogan or turian in sight, which is probably just as well, if the history classes she's had to take have any grain of truth to them. Just like back in their room, this lounge is well-stocked with human spirits, and soon enough Kelsa and Siobhan are draining a bottle of Irish whiskey, two shots at a time. The soldiers talk about which postings they'd like, once they both become full-fledged officers; they're both looking for something in the Traverse, where they might see some action. Siobhan wants to go on to N-School, while Kelsa just wants to feel like she knows what she's doing again. They talk about other things, too; safe things, things like how shitty Kelsa dances, or how cute Siobhan thinks some of the boys in the room are. Nothing to do with Earth or God or what either of them did before joining the Alliance. Kelsa doesn't mention that she thinks Siobhan's wasting her credits; the lounge is nice, crammed with aliens and civilians and better music than any bar on Arcturus Station, but the liquor and the conversation aren't any different.

When the Jameson's over halfway empty and the dance floor's full of people moving, some of them even gracefully, a tall purple-hued asari stalks up to the soldiers' table. She has some subtle white lines painted on her face, swirling around her cheeks and underneath those hardened tentacle-looking things that sweep back from her forehead. "I noticed you haven't tried the floor," the alien purrs, her voice rising _through_ the music rather than cutting over it. Her navy-toned eyes move from one human to the other, catching only for a second on the pistol still slung at Kelsa's hip.

Now that Kelsa's had a couple of drinks, the soldier can see the newcomer as something other than a threat, and she's got to admit that the alien woman's dress would probably look a lot better off of her. Other than the weird tentacles, asari look an awful lot like human women, and up close, Kelsa's eyes have plenty to keep them from looking up at the alien's forehead. "Don't dance," she gruffs, taking another shot of whiskey.

"She _can't_ dance," Siobhan adds, giggling, just as captivated with the beautiful stranger. "If you made her try, someone'd laugh at her, and then she'd break their nose...if they were lucky."

The asari doesn't look put-off by the threat underneath the officer-cadet's words...if anything, that makes her look more interested. "So you're a soldier, then?"

Siobhan answers again, her tongue just a little looser than Kelsa's. "We both are," she lets on. "Officers with the Alliance Navy...or we're gonna be, at any rate."

There's an edge to the blue woman's eyes, one Kelsa's seen before, back in the donut-hole. She's hungry for something. "It sounds like you're doing your species proud," the asari purrs, leaning against the back of an empty chair. "Have you ever had to kill anyone?"

"No-" Siobhan tries to say, but Kelsa cuts in with a "Yes." She doesn't know why she says it...only that her tongue's buzzing and her finger's itching and if she doesn't find somewhere else to be, soon, she's going to do something even more stupid. The soldier stands up, ignoring the surprise on Siobhan's face, but she can't ignore the asari as she takes one smooth step to block Kelsa's quick exit.

The alien's smooth finger finds the soldier's chin, pressing Kelsa's head back until their eyes meet. In the lounge's low light, the asari's eyes look almost black, at least for a second, and Kelsa's heart hitches faster in her chest. "I believe you," the stranger purrs, so low that Siobhan probably can't hear.

Kelsa has to swallow hard to get her voice to work, but she doesn't reach for one of her guns, or try to break the asari's arm. Tactics and training and instinct are all gone; even the music dims in the soldier's ear, drowned out by the sound of her own heartbeat. "Who are you?"

"You may call me Pai'a, Alliance officer-to-be," the asari says, a cobalt tongue peeking between cerulean lips. "And I am not interested in dancing."

A rustle sounds to Kelsa's left, and she glances that way, breaking the alien's intense stare to see Siobhan coming within a half-pace of the two of them. She looks concerned, and maybe just a little bit jealous, but Kelsa can't tell which one of them she might be jealous of. "What _are_ you interested in, exactly?"

Pai'a's forefinger is still curled underneath Kelsa's chin, but the asari gives the other human a hungry smirk. "Testing the endurance of Alliance soldiers, naturally," she breathes, and then takes a step back. Kelsa's skin tingles where the asari touched her. "I'm quite thorough in evaluating new allies of the Asari Republics…if the interest is mutual, at any rate."

"It is," Kelsa gruffs, her tongue betraying her again, but she doesn't flinch back from the narrow glare Siobhan shoots her way. "Come on, Shiv," the soldier growls, snatching up the Jameson bottle to take with her. "It'll be fun."

The Irish woman looks from Kelsa to the asari, and Kelsa can see a telltale hint of red blossom underneath her neck. "Why the hell not," Siobhan laughs. "Happy Christmas."


	6. Ch 5: Paying Her Dues

Author's note: Thanks so much to everyone who's reading along, especially anyone who drops a review! And super-duper-triple thanks to my excellent beta-reader, **clafount**!

* * *

_Personnel Management Office_

_1415 Zulu_

_25 August 2175_

_Nexus Campus, Officer Candidate School, Arcturus Station, Arcturus_

The room is cozy, warm in more ways than one. After three years of hard lines and cold corridors and military precision, and a lifetime of abandoned buildings before that, Kelsa almost feels trapped by the richness of the office, even as she sinks way back into the reclining chair. A cozy-looking woman sits across from her, with a little coffee table between them, and a fake fireplace crackling off to Kelsa's right. The woman's Alliance, but you can hardly tell, from the way she lets her hair loose and her lack of a uniform. The nameplate on her desk says she's LT. CMDR. MAUREEN TRAVERS. Everything about the office and the woman herself is built up to make someone in Kelsa's place as comfortable as possible, which just makes Kelsa suspicious.

"Lieutenant-cadet Shepard," the commander sighs, calm. "You are four days away from graduating from OCS, is that right?"

"Yes, ma'am," the soldier clips, an uneasy feeling settling in her stomach. "If you clear me for a commission."

Travers smiles, her white teeth sparkling behind too-red lips. "You're probably wondering why I've called you into my office this afternoon. Is that right?"

The repeated question makes Kelsa want to narrow her eyes, but she fights the impulse, doing her best to keep her face as smooth as new-pressed sheet metal. "You flagged my IG form for review, Commander," she guesses. She hopes that's all it is, even if that's bad enough. "Something in it told the brass that I should see a counsellor, I guess."

"Very perceptive of you, Shepard," Travers tells her. "First, you should know that you're considered an exemplary student; your file is replete with commendations from your instructors, and you've never performed beneath the ninety-fifth percentile on any practical or theoretical examination in the two years you've been here. The Alliance needs officers of your calibre, and I believe you have the potential to be a real asset to humanity, and to galactic peace." Kelsa feels a very strong _but_ coming on, and the commander doesn't disappoint her. "But," Travers sighs, "that will only come to pass if you truly feel comfortable here, Shepard. If you feel you've found a home and family with the Earth Systems Alliance."

Three heartbeats pass before Kelsa understands that the older woman is waiting for a response. "I do feel that way, ma'am," the soldier says, her brows knitting together despite her best efforts. "I even got an Alliance tattoo on my shoulder blade, just after Lieutenant Riley got her commission." A year ago, now. Kelsa also got a stencil of Shiv's lips on the inside of her right thigh, to remember the woman by, but she doesn't tell the counsellor about _that_. "The Alliance is the closest thing to a family I've ever had, Commander."

Travers nods. "That's right; you're an orphan, aren't you?" She shakes her head, smiling sympathetically. "It can be so hard, growing up without a family to give you structure. Even foster families can leave you feeling estranged and alone." The woman sits forward in her chair, fixing Kelsa with a weighty look. "As you were filling out your intention to graduate form, Shepard, you selected that you would prefer to be called _sir_ rather than _ma'am_ by subordinates. Is that right?"

This line of questions actually helps Kelsa relax; she thought for a second she'd have to make up some bullshit about a foster family, or remember some lie or another she might've told to some officer. "Yes, ma'am, I did." She sits up a little straighter in the soft chair. "Is that a problem?"

"Not in and of itself, no," the counsellor says. "The Alliance recognises a spectrum of gender identities, even if military protocol requires a binary classification." After two years of school, Kelsa should be able to understand all those words, but for some reason she can't quite get a handle on where Travers is going. "You're here because we want to help you be the very best soldier you can, and that requires you being comfortable with who you are. We want to help you do that, Shepard."

"I am comfortable, Commander," Kelsa says. _As comfortable as I ever was in Detroit_, she doesn't. "I...don't think I get what you're getting at, ma'am."

Travers takes a breath, picking her words carefully. "Have you ever thought of yourself as anything other than a woman, Shepard?" She finally asks. "Have you found yourself identifying as a man, or as something else entirely?"

Kelsa blinks once, then twice. Then she laughs, despite herself. "No, ma'am," she manages, shaking her head to underline it. "Never had any doubt about that." Raff and some other boys back in the Garden did, but most of them are dead. She made some of them that way.

The officer doesn't look too convinced. "Gender dysphoria is a medical issue," she says, still calm. "Nothing to be ashamed of, Shepard. If you meet the clinical criteria, there are many treatment options we can pursue together, from hormone replacement to specialised gene therapies that can be quite effective."

The soldier doesn't interrupt her superior officer, even though she's sorely tempted. "You think I think I'm a man, just 'cause I wanna be called _sir_ by people underneath me, ma'am?" As she says it, Kelsa sees why it's not as stupid as she thought it was a second ago, but she lets the question hang, regardless.

"It is a possible indication," Travers tells her. "The Alliance has strict policies on issues that affect good order and discipline; ensuring that our officers are medically and psychologically fit is a major focus of those policies. If any of our personnel require assistance, the Alliance makes resources available to them." The counsellor's head shakes again. "There is no judgment, Shepard, and there need be no shame, either. If you feel misidentified as a woman, I'm here to talk with you about that."

"I know what I am," Kelsa breathes, only adding "Commander" after a half-second's pause. _I'm a killer_. "I don't shave my legs or paint my face, but that don't mean I'm not a woman. I got less than no interest in changing that, ma'am."

The lieutenant commander settles back in her seat, looking thoughtful. "I cannot gainsay any of that," she lets on. "But it gives rise to the natural question of why you are willing to call a female officer _ma'am_, but you're less than willing to accept that address, yourself. You must know that such a decision may cause friction in your command structure."

Kelsa hitches a shoulder in a half-shrug. "I...haven't really thought about it," she admits, and that's almost true. Her pencil hung over the _ma'am_ on the form for three full seconds before she circled _sir_. "I guess it's just that where I come from, _ma'am_ is what you say to somebody's momma," the soldier says. "It shows a kind of respect, but that ain't the kind of respect I need to have, if I'm gonna be responsible for a team and a mission."

Travers nods, calm and reasonable as always. "Yet you understand that such is not the case in the Alliance military," she points out. "There's only one kind of respect a subordinate is supposed to show a superior, regardless of their gender." The commander trails off for a second, her smile turning into a smirk. "I can see by the look on your face that you disagree, Shepard."

"Not at all, ma'am," Kelsa tells the officer. "I just know that there's a difference between _supposed to be_ and _is_. And I've spent too many years running faster and hitting harder than the boys around me not to see that lots of them salute male staff lieutenants a little more sharply than they'd salute you, Commander."

It takes another second for the older woman to answer, and in that pause, Kelsa can see that the commander won't argue the point. "If that is true, do you truly believe that forcing men and women under your command to address you with a masculine pronoun will change their opinions?"

"It ain't my job to change the galaxy, Commander," Kelsa says. "No disrespect."

"And what is your job, in your estimation?" Travers' tone is just a little bit sharper, now.

Kelsa swallows the first answer that crosses her mind, that she's got to be a better killer than anyone she might meet on the battlefield, because she knows that's too honest for the brass. "I have to execute missions with a team, take orders and give them to make sure the job gets done."

The commander nods, the sudden edge in her face softening, but it doesn't quite go away. "You believe that demanding a man's respect will help you do that," she says, almost to herself. "Have you considered that, instead, it might engender resentment, or even the kind of skuttlebutt that reduces unit cohesion?"

The soldier can't say she's thought of that, which is stupid, since she's spent the last two years thinking about becoming an officer almost every day. Respect is everything in the Alliance Navy; what can start as a snicker in a cantina can wind up ending someone's career, or worse. "I don't know, ma'am," she says. "If it's this big of an issue, I guess I can drop it." She doesn't really like it, but she can't say why. "It's not worth discharging me over, Commander."

"I urge you to consider the matter more deeply," Travers says. "You aren't just serving yourself, or your species in the abstract, but the men and women who're going to be putting their lives into your hands. When they look at you, they will see a woman, unless you begin presenting yourself otherwise. It is up to you to earn their respect and their trust; part of that means that you have to trust _them_, to mean it when they salute you, to listen when you give them orders."

"Yes, ma'am," Kelsa says, because she can't say anything else to that. "I should've thought better of it."

The commander pushes herself out of her chair. "We'll speak again in a few days, when you've had a chance to think it over. Until then, go have some fun, lieutenant-cadet. You've earned it."

"Aye, aye, Commander," the soldier sounds off, cutting the officer a salute. Once she hears that she's dismissed, Kelsa turns heel and leaves the office, still unsure just how she feels about the conversation.

* * *

_Ambrosia Plaza_

_0130 Zulu_

_7 March 2176_

_Illyria (ashore), Elysium, Vetus_

The call to general quarters came half an hour ago, out of the black. Kelsa's team's been on the night shift, so they're awake and on the ground, while the _Tokyo_ lends fire support to the _Agincourt_ to cut off enemy retreat and reinforcement. The fight was half over before the Alliance vessels arrived, and now that they're ruling the skies, there's no question about how all of this is going to turn out. Not that the pirates are just going to give up, even though they're being broken, and that's just fine with Kelsa.

Staff Lieutenant Martinez leads their five-person shore party, one of two on the _Tokyo_. Just before Captain Anderson sent them ashore, he told Martinez not to let a single pirate get past them; kill or capture is the order of the day. Kelsa already bagged three, two batarians and a turian, but the square looks deserted. It's 1:30 in the morning back on Arcturus, and by coincidence the city's in the middle of the night, too, which makes things even more interesting.

"Shepard," Martinez barks, pointing off to the right. "Take Masterson and scout out that building. Rendez-vous in the middle of the plaza when you've secured any survivors."

"Aye, aye, sir," Kelsa clips, hiking up her shotgun. "Come on, Corporal." She's glad, for just a second, that pirates sometimes use chemical ordnance, since she can hide her grimace behind her breather helmet when he shoots back an _aye, aye, __ma'am_. The building's half-collapsed and still smoking, probably from a bomb, and the short-range radio lets Kelsa hear every hitch in Corporal Masterson's breathing. She doesn't think any less of him for being scared; this is his first fight, and any fight can be your last. "We'll start at the bottom, sweep up as high as we can," the lieutenant tells him. "Stick to cover, keep those biotics ready, and you'll do fine, Masterson."

"Will-do, ma'am," Masterson says, and he sticks close behind her as she finds a concrete stairwell that leads them down into the basement.

A scrambling noise from around a nearby corner has Kelsa shouldering the wall and double-checking the incendiary ammo on her shotgun. She gives Masterson a hand signal to concentrate his biotics, and then she whistles loud enough for anyone around the corner to hear. "This is 2nd Lieutenant Shepard, Alliance Navy," she calls out, loud enough to echo. "Any hostiles are advised to lay down their weapons and surrender peacefully. If you're friendlies, don't make any sudden moves."

"We're friendly!" A voice hisses, in Galactic. "Please don't shoot us!"

Masterson slumps, like he's relieved, but Kelsa signals for him to keep himself ready. There's something wrong about that voice. "Alright," she says, buying herself some time to think. "We're going to come out and help you." There's a convenient piece of rubble close by, and Kelsa kicks it across the gap to smack into the far wall.

Sure enough, the rock gets pulverised in a hail of small-arms fire, accompanied by a slew of alien curses; Kelsa's translator can only pick up about half of them. "I knew it," she growls, loud enough for them to hear. "You motherfuckers really shoulda surrendered! Any humans in there better duck!" She tells Masterson to cover her before she dives into the clearing; her heart's as steady as a watch as she rolls and takes in the situation. Limited cover, three batarian hostiles behind a barricade; two with pistols, the other with a submachine gun. Pinned against a wall with a closed door between them.

Shots ping off Kelsa's shields, but she's on them in less than a second, vaulting over the barrier. The butt of her shotgun smashes into one of the aliens' faces, hard enough to break the ridges between his upper and lower eyes. Number two takes a shotgun shell to the face, while SMG turns and pounds on the closed door, begging to be let in. Kelsa trains her shotgun on him. "Gonna join the party, Masterson?" She calls out. "Don't think this one's going to surrender."

"No, no!" The batarian cries, throwing his gun away. "I surr-"

"Too late," Kelsa growls, over the sound of batarian blood sizzling in the crater that her incendiary round made in the side of his head. Behind her she hears Masterson heave, but she's not interested in coddling the boy; instead, the soldier takes her own turn to pound on the door. "Anyone in there'd better stand back," she says. "And anyone with guns had better put them down. You've got two seconds."

A second and a half later, she shoots through the door handle and kicks the slab of metal inward, raising her gun at the first person she sees...who happens to be a human woman that a batarian is treating as a shield. The girl's probably older than Kelsa, but she's whimpering like a child, sniffling. Two more batarians and two turians round out the room, and all four men have their own guns pointed right at Kelsa. "You will let us pass," the hostage-taker warbles. "Or she will die, along with you."

_Shit_. Kelsa keeps her shotgun on the talking batarian's head, which is half-hidden behind the crying woman's head. If it wasn't for Masterson, she wouldn't even hesitate; without her, the girl's dead anyway, if she's lucky. But Kelsa's already killed an enemy mid-surrender, and she doesn't want to have to kill Masterson to keep from getting court martialed. "Here's my one and only offer," she says, clenching her teeth tight. "You will throw down your weapons and let the girl go, and you'll get to spend the rest of your sorry days rotting in an Alliance brig."

"That doesn't sound very appealing, 2nd Lieutenant Shepard," the batarian points out. "I think I prefer my option better."

"Ma'am?" Masterson asks, behind her to the left. The batarian tilts the barrel of his pistol down, so it's flush against the woman's temple, and she sobs wordlessly.

_Shit_, Kelsa thinks again. "Alright," she says, her heart starting to tick faster now. The plan she hits on is dangerous, might get her killed or kicked out of the Alliance on her first real mission, but she'll be damned if she lets five pirates walk. "Alright," Kelsa says again, lowering her shotgun slowly, her eyes never moving from the batarian's two right eyes.

Right when the shotgun's angled toward the woman's shin, Kelsa pulls the trigger and lunges forward. To her great surprise, static crackles in the air behind her from one of Masterson's biotic attacks. A heartbeat later, Kelsa elbows the hostage down and plants another round at the base of the batarian's throat, using the gun's recoil to spin and drop one of the turians. Masterson's taking out the other turian with his pistol.

One more shotgun blast destroys a batarian, but overheats the weapon, and Kelsa's shields drop just before she can reach the last enemy. He gets off a couple shots into her abdomen, mostly soaked up by her heavy armour, but his skull doesn't hold up so well to the butt of Kelsa's shotgun. The room's too quiet after the bastard dies; Kelsa looks over her shoulder and sees the hostage lying motionless on the floor, her right shin a mangled mess. "Masterson, tourniquet. Now."

"Aye, aye, ma'am," the corporal manages, moving a lot steadier than Kelsa managed to after her first kill.

* * *

_Brig, SSV Tokyo_

_1000 Zulu_

_7 March 2176_

_Illyria (docked), Elysium, Vetus_

Martinez hasn't stopped glaring at Kelsa since he found out that he'd have to babysit her during the victory celebrations. He hasn't said anything, and he hasn't stepped into her cell, but that's only because he knows that as big as he is, she could have him face-down on the floor inside ten seconds. "You really fucked up," he says, after three hours of nothing but sulk. "You know that, right?"

"Yes, sir," Kelsa says, because that's the only thing she can say; she doesn't say she's sorry, because she isn't.

"Hope you like life on the other side of plexiglas," Martinez growls. "When JAG's through with you, you might be a civilian again in thirty years, Shepard."

Another voice rumbles from the shadows of the brig. "Let's not be too hasty, now, Lieutenant." It's deep and calm, not a single drooping syllable, even though the speaker's been awake longer than either Kelsa or Martinez.

The staff lieutenant goes as straight as rebar and nearly bruises his forehead with the force of his salute. "Captain Anderson, sir," he grunts. "How can we help you?"

Kelsa can't do shit from behind her glass, but she snaps-to, too. She keeps her mouth shut, though. "They've given her the Star of Terra," the captain says, to either of them. Maybe to both.

Martinez nods. "She deserved it." He shoots Kelsa a sour look.

The prisoner doesn't understand; she hasn't had any news for over six hours, since she was arrested for shooting the hostage. That can't be who they're talking about, though; losing a leg and passing out don't get you fast-tracked for the Alliance's highest honour.

"Now tell me," Anderson says, "what happened to land one of my people in the brig?"

Kelsa bites down on her tongue, and Martinez is only too happy to talk for her. "Shepard broke at least four conventions of the ACMJ, sir; Corporal Masterson swears that she killed a soldier in the process of surrender, and she gravely injured a civilian."

Anderson's look is more measured, but when he talks, it's to Martinez again. "As I understand it, the lieutenant took out the hostiles, while you let half a dozen pirates escape." He sounds curious, almost like he's talking about a sports team Martinez's son likes.

The staff lieutenant doesn't answer all at once. "...I secured the release of two hostages, and I kept casualties to a minimum, sir."

"Tell me, Martinez," the captain goes on, tapping his chin. "How many more hostages will those six batarians take, before we catch them?" He shakes his head. "Don't answer that; why don't you take a little walk? Get some sun on your shoulders?"

Martinez swallows hard. "Is that an order, Captain?"

Anderson's head tilts forward. "Does it have to be, son?"

"No, sir," the staff lieutenant clips, saluting again. "Understood, sir." Martinez stays in the brig for just as long as it takes him to double-time it to the door, and then he's gone.

Captain Anderson taps on the cell's control panel, and the plexiglass door splits down the middle, parting wide enough for him to step through. "Mind if I sit down, lieutenant? There's been a lot of standing around this morning."

Kelsa shrugs, gesturing for the captain to take the bunk; she stays on her feet, standing at rest. "Who got the button, sir?"

Anderson's smile twirks the right side of his face. "A corporal with way more guts than sense named Jane Howard; she held off four waves of pirates from a dug-in position in the southeast if the capital, here, before they overran her. Let nigh-on a thousand civilians evacuate before she died." That half-smile turns into a frown and the man shakes his head, letting the silence drag on for almost a minute. "Is that what you were after, Shepard? With that little stunt?"

The lieutenant blinks and shakes her head. "No, sir. Was just trying to keep the pirates from slipping the net, like you told us."

The captain nods. "And what about Corporal Masterson?" He asks, fixing her with a solid stare. "Is his report accurate?"

"It is, sir," Kelsa tells him.

Anderson doesn't look happy, but he doesn't really look surprised. "You killed an enemy on the verge of surrender?"

"Didn't give him the chance, sir," the lieutenant admits. "He was trying to rejoin the other pirates, with the hostage. I would've killed him before too long." She won't lie, not to this man, not for doing her duty. "Are you going to court martial me, sir?"

"I don't think so," Anderson tells her, and he sounds like he hasn't decided _not_ to court martial her, either. "Tell me what you would've done if Masterson hadn't've been watching you?"

Kelsa's eyes slide from the ridge on Anderson's forehead to a blemish on the wall, and her lips move before she can consider her words. "I wouldn't've shot that woman in the _leg_, sir, if that's what you're asking."

Anderson grunts, almost a growl. "Tell me why, child."

"Because the pirates would've done worse to her or someone like her if I hadn't stopped them," Kelsa says. "And because taking hostages only works if you think your enemy can't stomach losing someone. I don't have that problem, sir." Not since she'd had to lose her best friend. Not since she'd had to take him.

"I'll have to remember that the next time I need a hostage negotiator," the captain breathes, turning his sigh into a chuckle. "Goddamned pirates...just terrorists who try to make a little more money, seems like. Look at me, child." When Kelsa's forest-green eyes refocus on Anderson's forehead, he keeps going. "The Terminus Systems are getting out of control, and the batarians have their hands all over this mess; if they didn't start it, they wanted to see it finished. We're going to have to face some difficult choices in the next couple of years, and we can't go off throwing everyone into the brig left and right just for pushing the envelope."

Kelsa's throat goes dry; she can't really believe her ears. "What are you saying, sir?"

"I'm saying that Penelope Greene's leg will grow back, and the Alliance needs soldiers like you, Shepard. We cannot let this raid go unanswered; if we do, the next raid might hit Terra Nova, or Horizon...or the batarians might even be damned fools enough to try hitting Earth." Captain Anderson stands up. "Stand at attention, soldier." Kelsa does so, her heart thumping nearly as fast as it did in that basement. "Effective immediately, you're promoted to 1st Lieutenant...and now, as a captain's mast, you're busted back down to 2nd Lieutenant, soldier."

The soldier's lips turn down into a frown. "So...you're not going to court martial me, sir?"

Anderson shakes his head. "Not this time, Shepard," he says. "Just make sure you don't fire on a civilian again. And get some rest; when you get out of the brig, you're being reassigned to the _London_. It's an old ship, but I get the feeling you'll have plenty of opportunity for growth there." The man steps past her, and she understands that she isn't being released just yet.

Even so, as the plexiglass closes, Kelsa fights back a smile. "Thank you, Captain," she says. "I won't let you down."

"You'd better not, Shepard," Anderson tells her. Then he leaves her alone to think about everything he said and didn't say, and she hopes there's room enough for her on the _London_.


	7. Ch 6: Tears Of Blood

Author's note: Thanks so much to everyone who's read and reviewed, and especially thanks to my excellent beta-reader, **clafount**, for all of the support and encouragement!

* * *

_Captain's Office, SSV London_

_17:30 Zulu_

_10 July 2178_

_Olokun (orbit), Osun_

The ship dropped out of FTL a few hours ago, well back from the planet, so they could come in as cold as possible. There hasn't been a call to general quarters, so the plan must've worked, for whatever purpose they came to the Hourglass Nebula for. Even so, Major Kyle looks antsy, more so than usual; he's the ship's XO, responsible for the affairs of the ship's crew, especially the shore party leaders. The _London_ has four three-man fire teams for maximum flexibility, and Kelsa's had command of one of them since she earned a real promotion to 1st Lieutenant back in January. That's when the first of the Theshaca Raids happened, the first Alliance strike against the pirates that tried to wipe out Elysium. If she had to bet, Kelsa would say that's what they're here in the ass-end of the Terminus for, another dance with slavers, the kind of dance Kelsa's good at. When Kyle doesn't return her salute or speak after a handful of seconds, Kelsa clears her throat. "You wanted to see me, sir?"

The major's standing behind the Captain Ito's desk, looking down at a datapad, and he doesn't look up for another couple heartbeats. "This is it, Shepard," he says at last, his face setting just before he finally turns his eyes on Kelsa. "The last FTL vector that we could trace out of Theshaca leads to a point a few light years out of this system. Probe recon has a hot zone on one of the planet's moons, hotter than any cell we've hit. Arcturus thinks this is the syndicate's main hub."

Being proved right puts a smirk on Kelsa's face, even if she was only betting with herself. "And we get first crack at it, sir," she says, trying to keep the hunger out of her voice. Then a splinter of doubt itches at her thoughts. "Shouldn't Commander Nwoso be here?" The lieutenant commander's the ranking officer of the ground teams, reports directly to the major. "I can get him for you, sir."

"There will be no need," Kyle tells her, and she can tell that he doesn't like what he's about to say. "Nwoso's not in charge of the shore parties for this mission, Shepard. You are."

Kelsa isn't sure she heard him right. "Shore _parties_, sir?"

The major nods, once. "It sounds like your letters got to somebody back at the station, Lieutentant. It's up to you to..._handle_ the situation."

Her throat feels like a desert. "Major, I didn't mean to-"

"I know you didn't ask for it, Shepard," Kyle snorts. "I proofed your communiqés before you sent them off, remember?" He shakes his head and slides the datapad across the desk, toward the junior officer. "Admiral Chelsea read your reports, and he wants us to strike the decisive blow against these rabble right here. Are you up for it, Lieutenant?"

Kelsa scans the datapad as Kyle talks to her, caught somewhere between impressed and relieved that her concerns were actually listened to. As good as her word to Anderson, Kelsa hasn't hurt a single civilian in past raids, but she's had to let too many pirates slip the noose, each time under orders from Nwoso or Kyle himself to secure slaves and hostages first and pursue the slavers second. Now, the brass thinks that they found the pirates' base of operations. Surprise is supposed to be the order of the day...surprise, and victory. No more Mindoirs, no more Elysiums. Not after Torfan. "Yes, I am, sir," Kelsa answers the XO. "Is there any intel on the base's layout? Does the _London_ have the firepower to contain any attempt to withdraw?"

The major doesn't answer right away; instead he measures her, almost like he hasn't properly seen the soldier before. "A few geoprobes gave us enough to know there are two ancillary entrances to the catacombs, and one large cave that serves as a hangar bay." Kyle's omni-tool lights up, and a holo on the desk projects a sphere between them. The major touches a couple points on the orange ball that turn yellow, and the last one turns red. "That'll be where the lion's share of their ships are, and I assure you that we have sufficient ordnance to collapse each entrance, along with decimating the pirate fleet before it even gets off the moon."

The lieutenant leans toward the holo of Torfan, studying the details. "There could be other ways in and out, emergency shuttles…" But already a plan's forming behind her eyes.

Kyle grimaces. "In my opinion, a ground assault is foolish; there are hundreds of pirates, and only twelve of you. I've argued with the admiral, but he refuses to send reinforcements for a proper assault. Instead, he's asking Ito to throw all of your lives away."

"Waiting on backup's too risky," Kelsa breathes, all her focus eaten up by mapping out her assault. "If they know we're coming, they go set up shop somewhere else, and they'll be back in a year or two, or five. Gotta make them think they'll win until it's too late…" Her finger traces from one yellow circle to another. "It looks like these two doors lead to a common room, probably deep under the base. Nwoso'll take Daniels, Constanza, Pelopoulos, Johnson, and Sheldon down the left path. I'll take everyone else to the right. We'll demo the caves on the way." Blinking, the lieutenant looks through the holo to Kyle. "Don't blow the hangar until the first shuttles try to take off. Then it should be safe to call for reinforcements to dig us out, sir."

Her borderline-insubordination doesn't look like it sits well with the XO, but an admiral's given an order, and it's Kelsa's operation. "And if we excavate only to find a dozen Alliance corpses and the pirates find another way out?"

"Then have Arcturus send somebody better next time, Major," Kelsa tells him. "But I know I can do it, sir. Just give me fifteen to get the others ready."

The holo flickers off and Kyle straightens up, finally giving Kelsa her salute. "You have ten, Shepard," he says. "Make them count."

Kelsa gives a parting salute with an _Aye, aye, sir,_ and heads to the mess to gather the shore party.

* * *

_Subsurface Bunker Entrance_

_1800 Zulu_

_10 July 2178_

_Torfan (ashore), Olokun, Osun_

Kelsa kicks one of the batarians on the floor, and he doesn't kick her back, so she holsters her shotgun and takes off her helmet. The blast that brought down the outside cave shook the airlock, but didn't breach it, and they're gonna be in these tunnels for a long time; no point in wasting their suits' life support. She's got five other people with her in the bunker, no casualties. No prisoners. If she prayed, Kelsa'd pray that Nwoso's team hasn't run into any worse trouble in taking their own airlock. "Reedquist," the soldier barks, to the only other officer on her team.

"Ma'am?" 2nd Lieutenant Sarah Reedquist clips, once she's collapsed her own helmet and readied her assault rifle again.

Kelsa checks over her shotgun as she talks. "Take Barnes and Amato to scout the hallway. They've gotta know we're coming. Go stir up some trouble and bring it back to us." Reflex has her return the junior officer's salute.

Without having to be told, Corporal O'Mara and Service Chief Schreier take up defensive positions around the bunker's back entrance. Both are good men, steady, older than Kelsa but ready to follow her orders. The three of them were a team before Captain Ito made Kelsa the pointman for the whole shore party, and they've already followed her into hell over half of the Terminus Systems. They hadn't even winced when she told them the plan. _Ain't nobody else gonna steal our action this time, Shepard_. _We do it our way_. Hell, Schreier even played an old Sinatra song into all of their HUDs in the push down to the airlock, about a click underground.

Kelsa nods to her men and takes her position just outside of the bunker, using a boulder and a big box as cover. She doesn't have to wait long; about thirty seconds later, a symphony of real music starts up farther down the tunnel, a bolero of bullets and battlecries. Barnes and Amato back into Kelsa's view, laying on suppressive fire until Reedquist comes running. Grenade pops and raspy screams cut through the gunfire, and the scout team withdraws, pulling back to the relative safety of the fortified airlock. Kelsa waves them on. "Whadda ya got, Reedquist?"

"Took out about eight of 'em, maybe a dozen more inbound, ma'am," the lieutenant rasps. "Looks like that big room you talked about's maybe a couple hundred metres, but it ain't gonna be easy to get to."

O'Mara snorts. "Nothin' ever is, LT," the Australian lets on.

"Damned right," Kelsa grunts. "Those four-eyes better get their asses moving. Nwoso's prob'ly waitin' for us already." The batarians oblige a second later, thirteen undisciplined thieves funnelling themselves right into a hard point. Kelsa takes out three of them with two shotgun blasts before she falls back into the bunker herself, and her team cuts down the rest. Schreier's sniper rifle drops a couple batarians who tried to run. "Come on," Kelsa tells her people. "Let's get to the rendezvous."

A chorus of five _Aye, aye, ma'am_s chases Kelsa into the corpse-covered hallway. She jumps when one of the bodies groans, fixing her shotgun onto the batarian, the only one still alive...and he doesn't look like that'll be true for too much longer. Even so, he manages to force out a few phlegmy words. "Did...Kraxnos send you people?"

"No," Kelsa tells him, checking her shotgun. The whole team got fresh ammo blocks in all of their firearms, not to mention two spare blocks per soldier, but she doesn't feel like wasting ammo on a dead body. "We're Alliance marines. Corporal Jane Howard sends her regards." Before he can die on his own, Kelsa brings her boot down hard, right on his face, and then she keeps walking. Amato and Reedquist both mumble uneasily, but neither of them speak up; Corporal Howard saved a lot of people on Elysium, but she couldn't save everyone on the planet, and every Alliance Marine's heard stories about what the pirates did to civilians before the Alliance flotilla arrived. O'Mara and Schreier won't breathe a word against their lieutenant while they're on a mission, loyal to a fault.

The cave gets wider and a little taller, but the floor and walls are smooth, free of anything that might be used as cover, all the way up to a set of horizontal bay doors. Bay doors that are sliding open a centimetre at a time. Instinct takes hold of the soldier. "Scatter and zigzag," she yells. "There's a side door on the right. We can make it!"

Kelsa's instincts haven't failed her yet, and they don't start now, as much as she might wish she was wrong; there's a personnel carrier behind the big doors, a six-wheeled turian model. One big gun and two rapid-fire APWs. The marines open fire even as they run and dodge, but there's nothing to hide behind, and not even Kelsa can dance fast enough to keep the machine gun rounds from grazing her shields. The main gun doesn't fire for a long stretch of seconds, tracking closer and closer to Kelsa, and no matter how fast she runs, the soldier can't close the distance to the far wall in time.

Schreier, that quick bastard, catches up to Kelsa with about thirty metres to go. She opens her mouth to yell, to tell him to get back, but he shoves her sideways, hard, just a half-second before the APC's cannon belches out a shell. A half-second later, the only thing left for Kelsa to yell at is part of a leg and an arm.

And then Kelsa feels cold, in spite of the hard fight down here, in spite of the shotgun that's near to melting in her hands because Amato shorted out the heatsink routines that limit the number of rounds per minute any standard Alliance weapon should be able to fire. She feels the bone-cutting cold of a bad Michigan winter in patched-up clothes, the dead cold that she hasn't been able to shake since she dropped Jay.

Kelsa runs straight for the APC, not bothering to dodge, not even trying to zigzag. The cannon pops off another shot, but she rolls under it just in time and then jumps up, clearing the last two metres to the vehicle. Somehow she manages to land on the front with one lucky machine gun slug in her thigh, even though her shields dropped just after Schreier caught the shell. The pain doesn't even register, though, and dozens of hours of simulations kick in; the soldier pries up the tank's forehatch and drops a grenade into the front chassis. In another handful of seconds she repeats the exercise on the rear section of the vehicle, and the guns fall silent. She doesn't have time to stop, to breathe, to think. Movement means life, and the big chamber's crawling with pirates, maybe a hundred. Maybe more. The soldier dives into some cover from off the top of the smoking tank, rolling behind a stack of barrels that won't stop too many bullets. But the barrier holds long enough for her shields to come up and her suit to give her leg some medi-gel.

A skirmish starts up from nearby, just a little bit beyond the barrels. "Must be Nwoso's team," Kelsa yells, to anyone in range. "Let's get ready to join up!" She counts out three more breaths before she jumps out from cover. Unlike the end of the cave, this chamber's a maze of trucks and boxes, so it doesn't take Kelsa long to find somewhere more secure to fire back at the enemy from.

O'Mara's the first one to find the 1st Lieutenant. "Amato's carked it," he tells her, in between barrages from his pistol. "Took that second shell you dodged. Great work on the tank, LT." The man's words are hollow and his eyes look glazed. Kelsa won't say anything about it in the middle of a firefight, but she knows that Operations Chief Castela Amato meant just about as much to O'Mara as Schreier did.

"Hold it together, Kevin," she breathes, ditching her half-melted shotgun and taking up her own pistol. It's maybe the third time she's used the man's first name since they met two years ago. "Stay with me, stay smart. We'll get these fuckers."

The corporal swallows and nods, but anything he's about to say gets sidelined when the whole room starts shaking. Chips of rock rain down from the ceiling and a couple boxes fall around them. "Guess the _Tokyo's_ joining the party," O'Mara yells.

Kelsa nods. "No way out but up," she tells him. "Let's go!"

They push off together and meet up with Reedquist and Barnes in the next row over. Reedquist's limping, even with medi-gel, but her assault rifle's steady. Halfway into the big storehouse, the team's joined by three more marines: Staff Lieutenant Maisie Sheldon, Corporal Hector Pelopoulos, and Serviceman Victor Constanza. Nwoso, Johnson, and Daniels are dead, taken out by some heavy mortar fire. The seven living soldiers form into a single squad with Kelsa on point, even though Sheldon's technically the ranking officer, just as Commander Nwoso was before her. The marines fight across the storage bay; Kelsa picks up a shotgun from a dead batarian along the way, and by the time they've cleared out the room from the outside in, she's used it to kill twenty-seven batarians, six krogan, and two turians.

In the base's middle levels, the soldiers have to go room by room, and Kelsa splits them into two-man fire teams to cover more ground. The tactic's risky, especially for Kelsa herself, since she's the odd one out. But they stay in radio contact and rendezvous often. That way they clear two more floors. Kelsa thinks it's strange that they don't run into any slaves, but nobody has any ideas, and the pirates aren't interested in talking...not that the marines are keen to listen, in any case.

After sixteen more hours of combat, Barnes walks into a grenade launcher, and Constanza gets taken out near the collapsed hangar bay a couple of hours later. Everyone else is hurt, woozing on their feet, but they can't stop. The Alliance isn't going to try to dig them out for at least another day, and it's hard to say how many pirates are left. Kelsa regroups the marines into a single squad and stakes out a defensible position to catch a few minutes' rest.

Bootsteps echo in a near corridor, but before anyone can get a shot off, a booming voice calls out from the shadows. "We would speak with the humans," the stranger says. He sounds krogan to Kelsa's unpracticed ears. "We've come to parlay, unarmed, in good faith."

Reedquist and Sheldon both give Kelsa skeptical looks and she mumbles for them to keep their weapons raised. "Never heard of good faith out of a pirate," she tells the shadows. "Come and talk. If I like what I hear, I might even let you leave again."

The speaker takes a step forward; he's a batarian, but a big one, and he looks unarmed. Nobody else comes out of the shadows. All four of the pirate's eyes blink, and then blink again. "Where are the rest of you?" He growls, suddenly paranoid. "My men have reported dozens coming up from the cellars. I see only five."

Kelsa kicks off from behind her rock, keeping her stolen shotgun ready. "I've got infiltration teams scouting," she lies. "Whatever you're offering, my answer's no."

The batarian laughs. "That's no way to bargain," he tells her, and takes another look at the wounded band of soldiers bleeding in front of him. "We are trapped by cave-ins, with no equipment to dig ourselves out. The surface communication towers have been compromised, and we have no QECs. But I still have a hundred brothers for every human I see. On my word, you would not survive the hour."

"Get on with it, then," Kelsa barks, her eye twitching. "Either say what you came to say, or try and kill us. Hasn't worked out so well for you yet."

"Fine," he grunts. "I have much property that I am willing to part with, in order to secure passage for me and my brothers out of this system, where your kind will not follow us."

The soldier's lip curls. "By _property_ you mean _slaves_," she says, and the batarian doesn't argue. "I've killed two hundred and fifty-seven batarians in the last twenty-four hours," Kelsa tells him. "Seen half the fuckers before now, on other planets and moons. Times where I had to let them go and couldn't follow them, because my superiors wanted to save their hostages."

The batarian nods. "Wise people, these superiors of yours," he says. "Everyone lives, everyone's happy."

"I wasn't finished," Kelsa hisses, gripping her gun tighter, though she's not pointing it at him just yet. "But my superiors got tired of chasing you and your _brothers_ from one rabbit hole to another." She glances up toward the ceiling. "They put me in charge of this operation to make sure that doesn't happen again...and there ain't any way for them to tell me different, now. So I've got an offer for you."

The man's face scrunches up, in the batarian gesture of a frown. "I'm listening, human."

"Surrender," Kelsa tells him. "Give up your weapons and hostages, and when the Alliance comes to dig us out tomorrow, you can all spend the rest of your days in an Alliance brig." She knows it's just what she told the batarians on Elysium, that it's not an easy mouthful for anyone to swallow, but it's all she's got.

"I don't know who you think you are, human, but you address Master Eg'harn Blyest," the batarian says, and Kelsa knows he'll give her the same answer she got back on Elysium, two years before. "I have been more than patient with you. I count twenty-three humans among my property, who breathe only at my pleasure. I will see each of their throats slit before I surrender to you."

The soldier spits and tastes crimson on her tongue. "I'm Lieutenant Shepard, Alliance Navy," she says, levelling her shotgun at the pirate. "And here's my answer."

* * *

_Coburn Memorial Hospital_

_0900 Zulu_

_5 August 2178_

_Arcturus Station, Arcturus_

She opened her eyes two days ago and nearly killed herself trying to pull the tubes out of her throat and arms. The last thing she remembers before then is hobbling out onto the surface of Torfan in between O'Mara and Sheldon. She collapsed almost as soon as she saw the silhouette of the _London_ hanging overhead.

Schreier, Reedquist, Amato, Barnes, Nwoso, Johnson, Daniels, Constanza, and Pelopoulos. Forty hostages, over half of them human. Nine hundred and seventy-eight pirates.

They're all dead.

But Kelsa's alive, and so's O'Mara and Sheldon. From what the nurses say, they're just as bad off as Kelsa, or worse. She doesn't even know if they're awake, not really.

Captain Ito came by to talk to Kelsa after she opened her eyes, told her how proud he was of her, but there was a shadow in his face. She got the feeling that he almost would've liked it better if everyone had died down there, the whole team, so they could be heroes. He said they all were anyway, but Kelsa knows she isn't one. She just did what she had to. Major Kyle came around not long after, but that visit didn't go so well, and a burly pair of nurses had to push him out of the room by the end.

No one's been by since, so when a soft knock sounds on the door, Kelsa isn't expecting anyone but another nurse, or maybe the doctor. But the man who steps through the door doesn't look familiar; he's old, at least sixty, with bristly white hair parted along one side. And then she recognises the face she hasn't seen but once, six years ago, in the Alliance recruiting office in Detroit. The heart monitor beeps a few ticks faster for a couple of seconds. "Major Kincaide," she rasps.

"Shepard," the man says, and his voice cuts through her memory like a slug through meat. "Looks like you've got yourself a little banged up."

"I would say I've had worse, but I promised not to lie to you, sir," the soldier manages. Then she laughs, and regrets it.

Those blue-grey eyes flicker for a second. "I had my doubts about you, you know," he tells her. "Way back when I took you in off the streets, I thought you'd wind up right back on them, or in jail."

"Been to the brig a couple times already, sir," she says. "Think they might...put me back there now? For what I did?"

Kincaide's wrinkles twist. "Oughta be giving you a goddamned medal," he growls. "A whole stack of 'em. It'll be a miracle if we have another Elysium in my lifetime, kid. And now the bastards know what's coming for them if they try to pull one off."

Kelsa just breathes for a minute, pushing through the pain of her cracked ribs and the deeper aches that the medi-gel and the painkillers can't touch. "Major Kyle called me a butcher," she tells the old man, looking up at the ceiling. "A monster." She tastes the word on her tongue, and doesn't find it as bitter as she thinks she probably should. "Maybe I belong in prison, sir."

"Major Kyle's been relieved of duty," Kincaide sneers. "The press is having a motherfucking field day with that little quip of his...the _Butcher of Torfan_, the aliens are calling you." He shakes his head. "But as for prison...I'm afraid the Alliance has much worse in mind for you, when you're ready to get up out of that bed, soldier."

The woman peers at him through half-lidded eyes, heavy with painkillers. "Breaking big rocks into smaller rocks out in Hawking Eta, sir?" She hisses out another laugh.

"Worse than that, even," comes another voice, from the doorway. Major Kincaide stands up straighter, and Kelsa even tries to sit, but the machines by her start beeping like crazy. Captain Anderson takes a step into the room, giving the major a sharp nod. "I've read over Captain Ito's reports. Impressive stuff, Shepard, even if the cost was more than many could bear."

"Sir," Kelsa acknowledges, because she can't think of anything better to say.

"The nurses say you're tired, so we won't disturb you much longer," Anderson says. "But I just wanted to let you know in person that there's a spot in ICT waiting for you as soon as you're able to fill it, Staff Lieutenant Shepard."

_ICT?_ Kelsa blinks. _Staff…?_ "I...don't think I understand, sir." Her tongue feels like sandpaper. "You're sending me to the Villa?"

Major Kincaide steps in. "Only if you want to go, Shepard. But you've already proven yourself to everyone that matters."

"Hell," Anderson says, "I don't know if there's even a handful of N7s that could've taken a dozen people into that hellhole and lived to tell about it. Like the major says, it's your choice...but the Villa wants you, Shepard. It was made for people like you."

"If you say so, sir," Kelsa rasps, just before she closes her eyes. She doesn't hear the two men leave.


	8. Ch 7: D-Day

Author's note: Thanks so much to everyone who's read and reviewed, and thanks above all to **clafount** for her wicked beta-reading skills!

* * *

_Officer's Lounge_

_1500 Zulu_

_19 April 2183_

_Fifth Fleet Berth, Arcturus Station, Arcturus_

Staff Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko looks exactly like Anderson's written description, right down to the three-o'clock shadow. He's sitting in a booth in an empty corner of the room, a tumbler of something clear in front of him, but as soon as he notices her, the man rises to his feet and snaps to attention. "Commander," he acknowledges, keeping his eyes level, so he's staring an inch and a half above her head.

Kelsa nods for him to relax. "Anderson said you'd be early, Lieutenant. Have a seat." She glances down at the glass. "What're you having?"

"Water, ma'am," the soldier answers her, still not sitting down. "I make it a rule to not break out the rye before 2100 hours. I can get you a drink, though, if you'd like."

The woman gruffs a laugh. "Double vodka, neat," she tells him. She doesn't sit down either, not until he comes back with another tumbler half-full of liquor. It's empty by the time she slides into one side of the booth, the vapours tingling across the back of her throat like velvet. "So tell me, Alenko, what the fuck are we doing here?"

The lieutenant takes his seat again, but he doesn't relax. "Couldn't say, ma'am," he lets on. "I assume you got an encrypted message to meet here at 1500, with a name and a description, just like I did."

Kelsa nods. "Not even a dossier. You think the captain's trying to set us up?" She smirks at her own joke when she sees that Alenko caught her meaning. The slight colouring underneath his cheeks tips her off. "That's the case, I got some bad news for him."

"I wouldn't know anything about that," Alenko says, a natural diplomat if she ever heard one. "But I _do_ know who you are, ma'am." His tone doesn't waver even a little bit, unlike almost everyone else who says that these days. Usually there's fear, and at least a little bit of loathing, unless it's a gung-ho grunt that doesn't know any better; usually that's even worse. But from the lieutenant, Kelsa only hears respect.

"That right?" Kelsa wonders, oddly curious. "And who am I, Alenko?"

The lieutenant takes a measured sip of his water to buy himself some time. _So maybe a little fear_, Kelsa thinks to herself, but she doesn't smirk. "You're Lieutenant Commander Kelsa Shepard, an N7 operative with the Fifth Fleet." So far, he hasn't said anything that he hasn't read in Anderson's message, except maybe that she's Special Forces, but then _N7_ is monogrammed on the collar of her fatigues. "You conquered Torfan, ma'am." Again, the lieutenant commander doesn't sense any judgement, either positive or negative.

"All comes back to that, doesn't it?" Kelsa asks herself, half-grimacing. "So that's who I am? Some warlord on the make?"

The man's eyebrows knit. "I didn't mean-"

"I know you didn't," Kelsa cuts in, leaning forward. "But you're right...I'm a soldier. I kill people." She grunts. "A lotta people. That's who I am."

She can see by Alenko's frown that he disagrees with her. "I'm a soldier," he says. "I wouldn't say that's who I am."

Kelsa's eyes narrow. "Oh, yeah? And how many people have you killed, Lieutenant?"

For the first time, the man looks uncomfortable. "I've seen action, if that's what you're asking, ma'am," he tells her.

It's not an answer, but it'll do. "I've killed five-hundred and fifty people by my own account so far, Alenko," she says. "Over twice that, if you give me credit for everyone who died on Torfan." Plenty of people seem to. "I know what I am." She's known it since that February night, when she had to make her choice, and she made it.

"But…" The lieutenant chews on his thoughts for a few seconds, thinking hard, but not disgusted or afraid. "Why, Commander? Why'd you kill the batarians on Torfan, when they wanted to surrender?"

Kelsa wishes she had another drink; the vodka's long gone, and she can shut him down. But he's curious, not accusing, and that helps keep her tongue loose. "I told them they could surrender when they gave up the hostages," she tells him. "Instead, they laughed in my face and killed them. After, when me and O'Mara and Sheldon got a group of twenty in a corner, they tried giving up." She blinks and brings Alenko's face back into focus. "Shoulda gave up sooner."

Silence hangs over the both of them for about a minute before the lieutenant finds his voice. "Not sure I would've made the same call, ma'am...but I can see why you did."

"I don't think you can, Alenko," she says, shrugging. "I knew they were going to kill the slaves when I told them to surrender, but I did it anyway. I didn't give one good God damn about any of 'em. There were some good folks from Elysium on that moon...from Mindoir. They're dead because of me. And I would've shot them all myself if I had to, to kill the pirates on Torfan."

Alenko's brow arches a little, and there's some judgment there, but it'd scare her more if there wasn't any. "That...makes you sound like a sociopath, Commander," he points out. "I'm guessing that's not what you said in your psych evals during ICT."

"'Course not, Lieutenant," Kelsa gruffs. "And if you repeat what I said, I'll do worse than kill you. But if Anderson doesn't want us to fuck, he'll want us to work together, and I can't have the people under me wondering whether or not I'm crazy." She grabs up Alenko's glass of water and drinks down the last of it. "I'm not, by the way. I just don't let anything get in between me and what needs to get done."

The lieutenant reels, and then teeters back to balance in front of her eyes, ignoring her throwaway comment. "Sounds like you have a different definition of _what needs to get done_ than some people in the Alliance, ma'am," he tells her. "Plenty of regs against letting innocent people die, even if it gets the bad guys."

"I only ever knew one innocent person," the woman says. "And he died a long time ago."

"...Who was that, ma'am?" Alenko looks genuinely curious.

Kelsa's throat gets tight, just for a second. "You'll have to give me a lot more than a double-shot of vodka before I tell you that, Lieutenant."

"Yes, ma'am," he says, and he's about to say something else when a shadow falls over the table.

Captain Anderson sets three more glasses on the table, all full of dark liquid. Kelsa takes up the one closest to her and sniffs it, even before the older man says anything. _Scotch_. It's gone in another second. "I haven't even mentioned the occasion yet, Shepard," Anderson scoffs, but he's smirking. "I see you two've been getting to know one another."

Alenko straightens up even higher in his seat, but he waits his turn to talk, glancing at Kelsa. "Good to see you, Captain. There's only one reason I can think of that you'd pull me out of the 103rd to come back to Arcturus and have me sound out an officer."

The older man pulls up a chair. "Oh?" He grunts, looking from Kelsa to Alenko and back again. "And what's that, kid?"

"You're tapping me for something you can't afford to fuck up, even if it goes sideways halfway through," Kelsa says, in a low whisper. It's a boast, but not a big one. "Wanna know if I can work with the lieutenant." She gives the younger men a quick glance. "Looks like I can, sir."

Lieutenant Alenko's mouth opens, but Anderson talks over him. "I'm not going to lie to either of you," he says, and then takes a healthy sip of his drink. "But there's not a hell of a lot I can say here. You're two names I picked out of a _very_ small hat to come on a shakedown run for a new Alliance vessel."

Kelsa's eyes close for a half-second longer than a blink. "I thought Zander had point on the _Normandy_?" She's not supposed to know, but there are a few perks to being N7...like being able to out-drink pretty intelligence officers.

Anderson's frown proves her right. "I'm not gonna ask where you got your information, Shepard," he tells her. "But it looks like you've got the gist. The _Normandy's_ almost ready to be aweigh after her final field recalibrations. It'll only be a few days now." He knocks back the rest of his scotch and grimaces, just a little. "Speaking of a few days, happy birthday, Shepard. Sorry it's a little late."

"Thank you, sir," Kelsa clips. She doesn't remember her actual birthday, but April 11th was the day she walked into Major Kincaide's recruiting office with a bowie knife and wound up changing her life, so it's as good a day as any. Alenko still hasn't spoken up, though, so she looks at him. "Anything on your mind, Lieutenant?"

Alenko stays cool under her and Anderson's combined attention. "You have me at a bit of a disadvantage, ma'am," he says, and then he glances to Anderson. "Why are we here exactly, sir?"

"At least one of you knows something about discretion," the captain comments. "I'm sorry, Lieutenant. The commander and I served together on the _Tokyo_, back during the Blitz. She didn't know how to keep her mouth shut back then, either." She proves him wrong by holding her peace, even underneath the older man's smirk. "Like I said," Anderson goes on. "I picked your names, along with a few others. To put it plainly, I've been made the captain of the _SSV Normandy_, and yours were the first names I thought of for my new crew."

Alenko looks almost as surprised as Kelsa feels, but the lieutenant commander keeps her face blank and she let's the younger man answer. "Me?" He wonders, his face scrunching up. "What'd I do to deserve your attention, sir? Not that I'm complaining, of course."

"Drink your drink, Lieutenant," Anderson chides him. "I'm offering to make you the first officer of the _Normandy_, when I don't need your boots on the ground, son."

"Sir," Alenko breathes, after taking a slug of his whiskey without blinking. "It would be an honour."

The captain smiles to himself. "Something tells me you might not be saying that after you get to know the pilot, Flight-Lieutenant Moreau. It'll be your job to corral him, after all." Anderson fixes Kelsa with that same smile. "I'll give you one guess what you're going to be up to, Commander."

Kelsa swallows, her throat still tingling just a little bit from the drink. It was a good one. "Don't care what you call me, sir, so long as I'm out on the ground, every time."

"I thought you'd say that, Shepard," Anderson tells her, still grinning. "Been watching you for quite awhile," he says. "Nobody I can think of I'd rather have as my executive officer, truth told." He tilts his head forward, looking her right in the eye, his smile drying up. "Say the word and it's yours, child."

The woman wishes she had another shot of scotch to wet her throat. "You don't have to do that, sir," she breathes. "I'm sure you could find somebody better-"

"There's nobody I can think of," Anderson says again. "Are you up for the challenge?"

"Yes, sir," Kelsa clips, because she can't imagine backing down. "Whatever you need."

The chair scrapes back against the floor as Anderson stands up. "Excellent," he grunts, nodding to both of the younger officers. "I want to see you both at 0900 sharp on the twenty-fifth. I'll see that you have all the dossiers you need and make sure you get the proper clearances. Until then, I think you can celebrate a little bit."

"Aye, aye, sir," Kelsa and Alenko say at the same time. Kelsa returns Anderson's nod and watches him leave before she looks back at the other man. "So...how do you feel about breaking that 2100 rule some more, Lieutenant?"

"I think I can make another exception, ma'am," Alenko allows, still a little stunned. "What are you drinking?"

"Jameson," she tells him. "Bring back the bottle."

* * *

_Docking Bay_

_0700 Zulu_

_25 April 2183_

_Fifth Fleet Berth, Arcturus Station, Arcturus_

"Now I thought I told you to dress comfortably, Commander." Anderson's knuckles rap against Kelsa's blood-red heavy armour. Her shields keep even that soft tap from landing on the triple-laminated lacquer-titanium weave.

The soldier gives her captain a solemn nod. "Not wearing a helmet, sir." Her eyes skirt to the younger man at Anderson's flank. He's little more than a boy, wearing standard fatigues and an Alliance beret, and his eyes haven't wavered from the black _N7_ carved into the right side of her chest piece. He's staring almost as hungrily as he might at the tattoo of the same device she got in roughly the same spot on the day she graduated from ICT. "You must be Corporal Jenkins," Kelsa says, maybe a little harder than is strictly necessary.

The tone shakes the boy out of his trance, and he snaps to attention, pulling off a half-decent salute. "Ma'am," he clips. "Such an honour to finally meet you! I mean, I can't believe I'm gonna be workin' with _Commander Shepard_!"

Anderson cuts in with a good-natured chuckle. "That's enough of that, son. Why don't you go see to your station on the lower deck?" Jenkins swallows and salutes two more times, just to make sure, and he scrambles through the airlock of the _Normandy_. Anderson shakes his head. "He means well, at least."

"I'm still not letting him touch my gun, Captain," Kelsa tells the older man. "Not my shotgun, at least."

The captain leans sideways, sneaking a peek at the small of her back. "You still carting around that old boom-stick you picked up on Torfan, Shepard?"

Kelsa grunts. "A few parts are the same. Had to rebuild it a couple times at the Villa. Ain't exactly standard issue any more, even for criminals." She looks past Anderson, to the vessel that he's trusting her to help him run. "She's sleek, but there's room enough for another couple people on the ground team," the soldier points out. "We've got a full complement otherwise, sir. Don't we?"

The captain takes a steady breath. "We're not expecting any trouble on this cruise, Shepard...but you're right. After we're done with the mission, it'll be up to you to design the ground team as you see fit. But until then, there's someone I think you should meet." He gestures for her to board the ship ahead of him. "He'll be waiting down in my quarters."

Kelsa doesn't ask about what kind of mission would need a ship full of engineers and logistics specialists but only a single three-man squad; she'll learn what she needs to know when she needs to know it. On the way into the ship, the soldier glances toward the bridge and sees Alenko leaning against the back of a chair, while the ship's pilot's already in his chair, twirled sideways to face the other man. Neither of them notice their XO, and Kelsa doesn't stop long enough to fix that. Anderson takes the lead into the CIC, catching and returning the crew's salutes all the way down the stairs to the crew deck. He veers to the left at the elevator and doesn't even slow down at the doors to his office, which slide open with barely a hiss. The inside is as bare as the room Kelsa remembers from her stint on the _Tokyo_, though this chamber's smaller, and has something she never expected to see on an Alliance ship. Or, rather, some_one_. "Commander Shepard," Anderson rumbles, sounding as friendly as she's ever heard. "I'd like to introduce you to Nihlus Kryik."

The turian's obviously a soldier, but his armour doesn't show any insignia from the Turian Hierarchy. His skin's a brownish red with white clan markings either painted or tattooed onto his face and head, and he stands a few hands taller than Anderson. He doesn't move to shake her hand, which suits her fine. "Commander," he acknowledges, his metallic voice cool and distant but not hostile. "I'm here to evaluate the _Normandy's_ first mission. The hierarchy would like to know that its investment wasn't wasted...nor should it be forgotten by the Alliance."

Kelsa nods, having to tilt her head back a little to keep the alien's bright-green eyes in view. "And the Council wants one of theirs along for the ride, too," she says. "But now I know why the captain didn't bother giving me two more grunts to push around if we need to hop groundside."

The twitch of the turian's jaw doesn't mean anything to her, but Kelsa thinks she hears annoyance when Kryik talks. "The Citadel Council did feel that having an agent from Special Tactics wouldn't be out of the question," he tells her, and then he looks to Anderson. "She is either very well-informed or she's smarter than I've learnt to expect from military officers."

"Maybe a little bit of both," the captain says, with a half-smile he turns on Kelsa. "Nihlus' Spectre status is supposed to be a secret aboard the vessel," he explains. "So, naturally, the whole crew knows."

Kelsa nods. "Scuttlebutt's faster than FTL buoys, sir."

"Perhaps," Kryik says, crossing his arms over his barrel chest. "In an undisciplined order of battle, at any rate."

"Us monkeys are curious by nature," the lieutenant commander tells him with a neutral shrug. "I'm surprised the hierarchy even agreed to let the Alliance take possession of this bird, to be honest. The CIC doesn't look like anything I've ever seen before."

Captain Anderson clears his throat. "It certainly takes some getting used to, standing so far back from the bridge," he says. "But the turians have been quite accommodating with their resources, and the Council and the Alliance have worked hard on the _Normandy_ as well. It's in everyone's interests that the mission succeeds."

Now that curiosity that Kelsa's been pushing down rears up, pushing up against her training. "Briefing was a little light about where we're headed," she says, not exactly asking a question. "Not sure what the Council's interest in the Utopia System would be, sir."

The captain and the turian share a look that tells her that they both know, and neither of them are going to tell her, yet. "I believe you humans have a long-established colony in that region," Kryik muses. "Eden Prime, I've heard it called. It sounds like a sensible place for a field test."

"And proof positive that humans can work constructively with other Council races," Anderson points out. "Hasn't been all that long since First Contact...there's more than a few humans that wouldn't mind seeing us fail, so it's important that this trip run as smoothly as possible, Commander."

"Understood, sir," Kelsa clips, moving from rest to attention, and asks a question she knows she'll get an answer to. "What are your orders, Captain?"

"Shepard, let's see what we can find," he tells her. "Escort Nihlus onto the bridge and have Joker set sail to Eden Prime."

The soldier snaps off a salute. "Aye, aye, sir," she barks, turning heel and stepping out of the bare office at a steady pace. The turian falls into step just behind her, his footfalls whispering. Otherwise, Kryik's totally quiet, an avatar of discipline. Most of the crew look nervous as the XO passes by with her alien associate, and a couple try to sneak resentful glances to Kryik when they don't think Kelsa can see. Since part of her new job involves dealing with the crew, Kelsa makes a note to talk to a few potential troublemakers later. Lieutenant Pressly looks particularly aggravated, if the little twitch in his eye's anything to go by, and Kelsa puts his name at the top of her list.

The pilot and the first officer are where Kelsa left them when she boarded the _Normandy_, but now Alenko's sitting in his chair, and they're both facing their stations. "...And then the asari says 'You really should've spiced the gumbo!'" After a second, the pilot glances over to the first officer. "Nothing?" And then he says, "Shit. She's standing right behind me, isn't she?"

"She is, Flight Lieutenant Moreau," Kelsa says, before Alenko can confirm or deny. "She also has a rank, and a name that sometimes goes along with it."

"Ma'am," Alenko gruffs, sitting up straighter at his station. "Joker didn't mean anything by it."

"I'm sure he didn't," Kelsa grunts. "Captain wants us to cast off and hit Eden Prime ASAP."

"Damn, Commander," Moreau sighs, still slouching in his chair, just a little. "Not even five seconds and it's straight to business? No witty repartee with the adventurous pilot before we head off into the black?"

Kelsa rolls her eyes; Kryik still hasn't said anything, but she can feel him judging them, judging her. "The captain's report gave me the impression that you could fly this tin can pretty good, Moreau, but I ain't one to believe everything I read. Show me."

The pilot finally gets poised, his fingers clicking over the console in front of him. "Aye, aye, Commander," Moreau sounds off. A second later, the _Normandy _whispers, a couple of low vibrations teasing through the floor. "Tethers disengaged," the pilot reports. "We're clear and aweigh." The ship's thrusters barely register, but within a heartbeat the light outside the bridge's viewing port is blue-shifted. "Bearing down on Arcturus Prime relay; ETA thirty seconds."

Then Moreau flips a switch, and his voice echoes over the ship's internal comms system. "Arcturus Prime relay is in range. Initiating transmission sequence." It's fascinating, in its way, to watch the man work; this is the smoothest ride Kelsa can ever remember, but she knows it should be the choppiest, given the _Normandy's_ specs and balancing issues. "We are connected. Calculating transit mass and destination."

Kelsa peers up into the blue-tinted black and she feels her heart skip a beat. She's gone through plenty of mass relays in the years since Torfan and the Villa, but she's usually been in a sleeper pod or below decks. Watching the approach to the relay takes the soldier's attention for a few seconds. It hangs there, an enormous gyroscope pointing out across the galaxy, and for just an instant it feels like the ship's going to crash into the superstructure. But then the world blinks white and Kelsa's heart skips again. Now, instead of a giant piece of ancient technology through the viewport, there's nothing but the black shroud of night, prickled by countless stars.

"Thrusters...check," Moreau says, breaking through Kelsa's trance. "Navigation...check. Internal emissions sink engaged. All systems online." The man cranes his neck. "Drift...just under 1500 clicks."

Kryik speaks up for the first time since leaving Anderson's office. "1500 is good," he observes. "Your captain will be pleased." And then he stalks away, without a second look at any of them.

When the turian's out of whispering distance, Moreau snorts. "I hate that guy."

Alenko shakes his head, and Kelsa can't tell if he realises she's still there. "Nihlus gave you a compliment," he points out. "So...you hate him?"

"You remember to zip up your jumpsuit after taking a leak, that's _good_," Moreau gruffs. "I just jumped us halfway across the galaxy and hit a target the size of a pinhead, so that's incredible!" _Only thing worse than a know-it-all_, Kelsa thinks to herself, _is a know-it-all who can back it __up_. The man's good, all right, and he knows it all too well. "Besides," Moreau goes on. "I don't like having Spectres on board. Call me paranoid, but they just seem like they're asking for trouble."

"You're paranoid," Alenko obliges. "The Council helped fund this project; they've a right to keep an eye on their investment."

The pilot clicks his tongue. "Sure, that's the _official_ story," he says. "But only an idiot believes the official story."

Kelsa's had enough. "This is an Alliance ship," she barks, "not some extranet conspiracy theory chatroom. You both are soldiers. Start acting like it." From behind the chair, Kelsa can see Moreau's shoulders hunching up, and she takes that as proof that he really did forget she was just behind him. "Patch me through to the captain; he should be in his office."

The pilot does so with an _Aye, aye, ma'am_, and a few mutterings that Kelsa can't quite catch. "Shepard," Anderson says in greeting. "Give me a status report."

"Just went through the mass relay, sir," she tells him. "Moreau and Alenko report all boards green."

"That's excellent," the captain shoots back. "Have Joker find a comm buoy and link us into the network; I want mission reports relayed back to Arcturus _before_ we reach Eden Prime."

"You heard the man," Kelsa says to the back of Moreau's head.

The pilot nods. "Aye, aye, captain." His fingers fly again, but he's not done talking. "Better brace yourself, sir. I think Nihlus is headed your way."

"He's already here, Lieutenant," Anderson lets them know, a sigh in his voice. "Shepard, meet me in the comm room for a debriefing in three minutes."

"Aye, aye, sir," Kelsa tells the intercom. "On my way." As she stalks off, she catches the echoes of renewed conversation between the pilot and co-pilot; less than an hour together, and the two have struck up the kind of easy camaraderie that Kelsa's never quite been able to find in all her years of service...not that she's been looking, really. That's not what she's good at, after all.

Kelsa knows what she is.


	9. Ch 8: Fearful Symmetry

_Death. Death on the streets, in the alleys, in the sewers. Death in hard steel corridors, in soft river valleys. Death on the space stations, death in the bunkers that are the very last hope against the machines. Death in beds and bargain-halls, death on the battlements, death on the run. Death, screaming and screeching and hissing and howling; death of enemies and friends and parents and children and strangers. Death all around her. Death within her._

_Death pouring from her __fingertips._

* * *

_Medical Bay, SSV Normandy_

_1125 Zulu_

_27 April 2183_

_Docking Bay D15, Citadel_

There's white in her eyes and white in her ears, the last of those overwhelming visions washing over all of her senses. For a second Kelsa thinks she's asleep, strapped down to a table, but a sharp pain in her upper arm and a sharper gasp for breath snap the soldier out of her waking dream. She's standing in the medical bay of her ship in cotton clothes, her fingers a bare millimetre from Alenko's throat; each of her arms is being held by a different burly crewmember, pulling as hard as they can. Instinct has Kelsa relax her own tension slowly, to keep all three of them from tumbling back. Alenko looks a little shook up, but when her hands get clear of his neck, he coughs and rubs it.

The doctor's voice trickles into Kelsa's ears. "...had a few abnormal beta-waves, but your vitals spiked just before you regained consciousness. Lieutenant Alenko was concerned." The older woman sounds stern, sterner than normal.

"Sorry," Kelsa breathes, straightening up and shaking the servicemen off. They try mumbling apologies for laying their hands on her, but the soldier cuts them off. "It's fine, Marvins, Crabtree. Go back to your business." The two grunts collect themselves and stalk off after giving uncertain salutes. Kelsa eyes the angry swelling on Alenko's throat. "I whited out," she explains. "Had some weird dreams." _Everyone's dead_. "I'm sorry." _Death is coming for you anyway...better now. Better __quick_.

Kelsa stumbles and catches herself on the bed; she's been shot up with a sedative, probably the only reason Alenko's still breathing. "I understand, ma'am," the lieutenant tells her, his voice even gruffer than usual. "Shouldn't've tried to hold you down. Foolish of me."

Kelsa makes it back onto the bed, her head heavy on her pillow, but she's too amped up still to fall asleep. "You were a goddamned fool inching up to that beacon, Alenko," she breathes, blinking up at the ceiling. "Fucking thing almost killed me." She didn't mean to get caught up in it, herself. She probably wouldn't've, if Williams had been the curious one.

"I expect you're right, Commander," the doctor, Chakwas, says again. Her British accent sounds a bit softer now. "What on earth did you dream about, to make you so jumpy?"

"Nothing," the soldier lies. _The kind of nothing that's coming for us while we sleep_, a voice tickles against her temples, but already the images are breaking up, confused. "Just don't like getting woken up when I'm not expecting it, is all."

The doc clicks her tongue. "I'll have to make a note of that for the next time you enter my medical bay unconscious, Commander. I've a feeling we'll be seeing you that way again, the way you fight."

Kelsa just nods. "How long've I got before the juice drags me back under?"

"Not long," Chakwas says. "Truth be told, you should've lost consciousness within moments of the shot. I'm rather surprised you've remained lucid this long; it speaks of an uncommonly strong will, to go with your uncommonly strong arms." The woman taps her chin thoughtfully. "I suspect it's why you survived the destruction of the prothean obelisk. It would've killed a lesser mind."

The soldier grunts and glances to Alenko, still skulking around the med bay's door. "So I save your life and then almost kill you within a day. I guess you can call that a draw, Lieutenant." Already her eyelids are starting to feel heavy. "Fetch me the captain and let him know we don't have long before I'm back asleep." Alenko salutes and he's gone before she can blink. "You'd better go, too, doc. I've gotta feeling Captain Anderson's gonna want to keep the debrief need-to-know."

The woman busies herself with checking some equipment. "I will give you your privacy at the captain's request," she says, "and not a moment before."

"Yes, ma'am." Kelsa gives the doc a half-drunken smirk; behind the med bay door, it's clear that Chakwas' word is law, even though this is Kelsa's first visit as a patient.

Captain Anderson walks through that door a few seconds later, and hews close to Kelsa's prediction when he politely directs the doctor out of the room. "You were out for nigh-on twelve hours, Shepard," he tells her, "and now it sounds like you're going out again soon. You want to tell me what the hell happened here?"

_What's gonna happen is more important_, Kelsa almost says. "I'm sure you've got reports from Alenko and the stray we picked up. She still on board, sir?"

"Chief Williams?" Anderson muses, and then he nods. "Yeah, she's still here. Good kid, by the sound of it."

"Don't like her on my ship, sir," Kelsa says, her tongue loosened by the sedative.

The captain frowns. "I'll remind you that this isn't _your_ ship, Commander Shepard. It's mine, and it's by my word that Williams is a part of this crew. Do you understand?"

The soldier nods. "Yes, sir," she vows.

"Good," Anderson rumbles. "And anyway, we don't have time to squabble. I've pieced together most of what must've happened from Alenko and Williams, like you guessed. Poor Jenkins." He shakes his head. "They say you never forget your first casualty, so maybe I should be saying _poor Alenko_...but that's neither here nor there. I need to know what the hell was on that beacon before it blew into a million pieces."

_No escape._ _No sanctum._ "It's a little confused, Captain." Kelsa's eyelids droop, and she can see a few echoes in the darkness. "I remember yanking Alenko away from the beacon and then getting caught up in some kind of field...and then there were...visions."

"What sort of visions?" Anderson leans in, resting his weight on a hand by her shoulder. "Weapons? New technology?"

"Death," Kelsa summarises. "Machines...killing everything." She can't help the shiver that steals over her belly. "No getting away, sir."

The captain makes a thoughtful sound. "Geth, you think?" The creatures had been crawling all over Eden Prime, the first time they've been sighted outside of the Perseus Veil since they gained sentience and ejected the organic quarian race, who created the geth, from their home system and colonies about three hundred years ago.

"Not sure," Kelsa mumbles. "Whatever it is...it's coming. Gotta...stop it. Try…"

"Get some rest, now," Anderson tells her, and Kelsa falls into the black before she gets a chance to hear whatever else he has to say.

* * *

_Citadel Tower_

_1345 Zulu_

_28 April 2183_

_Presidium, Citadel_

Williams hasn't said more than two words since Kelsa did her a favour. _You'd think she'd be happier_, Kelsa thinks to herself as she and Williams and Alenko march out of the elevator to the Council's audience chambers. _I did her a favour_. Granted, she threatened to gut an innocent admin who only wanted to help the Alliance prepare for future geth attacks, but he was the face of the R&D lab that's holding the bodies from Eden Prime. One of those bodies used to belong to one of Williams' squadmates, and now it's en route to Earth for a proper burial. Not that Kelsa's looking for gratitude, especially from Williams. Kelsa should be the one doing all the thanking, anyway, since Williams soaked up all of the widowed husband's grief when he learned that his wife's body was coming home.

A couple of turians fighting at the head of a flight of stairs distracts the soldier from her thoughts. She recognises one of them as Executor Pallin, the one who looks so similar to Kryik, with different clan markings splashed across his faceplate. "...Your investigation is over, Vakarian," he rumbles just as the three humans trudge into earshot. "Drop it."

Pallin stalks away, but the strange turian lingers, turning to face Kelsa and Alenko and their stray gunnery chief from Eden Prime. "Commander Shepard?" He asks, surprising the soldier. "Garrus Vakarian; I was the officer in charge of the C-Sec investigation into Saren."

The commander's brow shoots up. "You mean the investigation that started _the day before yesterday_? It's already over?"

She still can't tell, but she thinks the big bird-man looks a little sheepish. "Afraid so." He's more silver-tinted than Pallin or Kryik, with a blue design on his face that looks like it reaches back to some of the spines of his head-fringe.

"Sounds like you came up empty," Kelsa grunts, not without her own kind of sympathy.

Vakarian dips his head. "Saren's a Spectre," he says. "Most of his activities are classified. I couldn't find anything solid." The eye that isn't underneath a modded visor gets narrower. "But I know he's up to something...like you humans say, I feel it in my gut."

_Like I said_, Kelsa doesn't say. _Empty_. Alenko clears his throat and nods up the next flight of stairs, where Anderson stands alone, waiting. "I think the Council's ready for us, Commander," the lieutenant gruffs.

Kelsa leads her squad past Vakarian, whose mumbled wishes of luck are almost certainly wasted. As soon as Captain Anderson notices them, he gestures for the soldiers to speed up. "The hearing's already started," he lets them know. "Come on."

Together, the Alliance personnel stalk into the audience chamber, where they're overlooked by the Citadel Council on their high perch at the far end of the room. Three people, representing the majesty and power of half the known galaxy; a turian, an asari, and an agile frog-like salarian hold sway over Citadel space from this room. And right now they're peering down at Donnell Udina, Earth's ambassador to the Citadel, and they don't look impressed. "The geth attack is a matter of some concern," the asari says, calmly. "But there is nothing to indicate that Saren was involved in any way."

The turian, an older-looking man, cuts in. "The investigation by Citadel Security turned up no evidence to support your charge of treason."

_Because you cut it off after a day and a half_, Kelsa wishes Udina would say. Instead the human blusters, trying to sound a lot tougher than he is. "An eyewitness saw him kill Nihlus in cold blood!"

"We've read the Eden Prime reports, Ambassador," the salarian councilor points out. "The testimony of one traumatised dock worker is hardly compelling proof."

_One traumatised dock worker who couldn't've known that Saren even existed_, Kelsa nudges Udina to argue back. But she can't even move a rock with her mind, much less telegraph a thought through the back of an old man's head. But before even Udina can offer up a response, a hologram blinks into focus, high on the dais alongside the Council. It's another turian, larger than life, made of washed-out orange light so Kelsa can't see too many of his features. But as soon as the figure speaks, she knows exactly who he is. "I resent these accusations," the turian growls, his tone made flat by the projector's speakers. "Nihlus was a fellow Spectre, and a friend."

Anderson speaks up, from Kelsa's left. "That just let you catch him off guard!" His finger's pointing up at the enormous light show, and she can't see his face, but Kelsa hears the anger in his voice...more anger than murdering a turian Spectre should have put in the man.

"Captain Anderson," the turian, Saren Arterius, almost purrs. It's obvious they recognise each other immediately, and Arterius' next words confirm Kelsa's suspicions. "You always seem to be involved when humanity makes false charges against me." Then his eyes turn on Kelsa, and even through the hologram, she feels a little chill run up the back of her spine. Kelsa's seen her fair share of monsters, especially whenever she's near a mirror, and it's almost always there in the eyes. "And this must be Commander Shepard," he sneers, transparent mandibles twitching. "Your protégée...the one who let the beacon get destroyed."

Kelsa's jaw tightens. "I was a little busy mowing down a couple hundred geth that you brought to a human colony," she says, stepping forward for the first time. She's still wearing her crimson hardsuit; like Alenko's and Williams', it's scratched and scorched from the fight, physical signs of the battle they had to go through. She thought it might help convince the Council to take the attack more seriously. Doesn't look like it did, though.

"Shift the blame all you like," Arterius purrs, coy as a cat. "Captain Anderson's taught you well in that regard. Never able to face up to his own failures...but what can you expect, from a human?"

The soldier keeps her eyes locked onto that holographic face. "You can expect me to kill you when we meet," she tells him. "But don't worry...I won't shoot you in the back, like you did to Kryik."

She can see that that struck some kind of nerve, by the twitch in the turian's jaw. "Your species needs to learn its place," Arterius says, growling. "You're not ready to join the Citadel Council…you're not even ready to join the Spectres!" That was what Kryik was on the _Normandy_ to do, after all-evaluate Kelsa's fitness to join the Council's shadow-division, Special Tactics and Reconnaissance. Arterius killed him before he could say whether or not she was worthy of the distinction.

Udina decides to draw the Council into the discussion again. "He has no right to say that!" The man barks. "It's not his decision!" Of course, Udina's got a hell of a lot invested in getting a human in the Spectres, since he wants a seat on the Council for himself one day, and Kelsa knows he thinks the one will help him with the other.

The asari councilor lifts a hand, gesturing for calm. "Shepard's admission into the Spectres is not the purpose of this meeting," she says, neutrally.

"This meeting has no purpose," Arterius calls out, from his lofty height, above even the Council. "The humans are wasting your time, Councilor. And mine."

"You can't hide behind the Council forever, Arterius," Kelsa tells him, never once even glancing away even while he was looking down on the Council.

Anderson clears his throat. "There's still one outstanding issue," he says, and Kelsa's stomach goes cold. _Don't say it, Captain_… "Commander Shepard's vision. It may have been triggered by the beacon."

Kelsa knows it's not going to help their case...it'll only make it easier for the Council to dismiss them. Arterius seems to have the same idea. "Are we allowing dreams into evidence, now?" He scoffs. "How can I defend my innocence against this kind of testimony?" _We'll see how well you defend your innocence against my shotgun_, Kelsa sneers back, in her head.

The turian councilor joins in. "I agree. Our judgment must be based on facts and evidence," he tells his fellow councilors, "not wild imaginings and reckless speculation."

The salarian nods. "Have you anything else to add, Commander Shepard?" By his tone, he sounds ready to dismiss them, no matter what she has to say.

"I'd just be wasting my breath," Kelsa says, crossing her arms. "It's obvious you've made your decision, anyway."

A few seconds pass while the three councilors trade glances, nodding and shaking their heads by turns, but not sharing a single word. Finally the asari councilor turns her stare on the gathered humans. "The Council has found no evidence of any connection between Operative Saren Arterius and the geth," she says. "Ambassador, your petition to have Saren's Spectre status revoked is hereby denied."

Arterius dips his head, and if she didn't know better, Kelsa could almost think he's smiling. "I'm glad to see justice was served," he purrs, and the holo starts flickering.

Kelsa lunges forward, stopping herself on the rail. "Wait!" She snarls, flicking back a loose braid that escaped from the pony tail she normally keeps her braids tied in. The hologram gets more solid, and Arterius' dead eyes fall on the soldier once again. "You might have these motherfuckers eating out of your hand like a buncha goddamned lapdogs," Kelsa goes on, "but you and I both know that you killed Nihlus Kryik, and the Alliance knows you led an assault on one of our colonies."

The asari councilor tries to speak up again, but Arterius growls over her. "Foaming at the mouth like a rabid varren will get you nowhere, Shepard," he warns her. "You should take another lesson from the captain, and know when to back down from your betters."

"Not gonna happen," Kelsa snaps. "The Council can make me a Spectre or they can try to arrest me, for all I care, but you brought the geth to Eden Prime. That means sooner or later, someone in Alliance Command is gonna send me after you, Spectre or not," she promises him. "And when that day comes, you'll see first hand what happens when this mad varren slips her collar."

Those steely orange eyes shift a bit, behind Kelsa, to the other two armoured humans. "And will you lead these pups into the same fate your team suffered on Torfan, Commander?" He asks, purring again. "Or will you save time and slit their throats yourself?" Then the hologram flickers and scatters, leaving the raised platform just a little bit dimmer.

"Restrain yourself, Commander Shepard," the asari councilor orders. "We have heard your evidence and found it wanting. Unless you have anything substantial to corroborate your claims, this hearing is dismissed."

Kelsa doesn't wait for Udina's objection, or for Anderson's permission; she pushes off from the railing and stomps between her subordinates, too afraid she'll be tempted to follow through on Arterius' veiled suggestion if she stops to listen to any of them bicker. Instead the soldier trudges through the fine scenery, making for the elevator, intending to find the dirtiest bar on the whole space station before her hands start to shake.

* * *

_C-Sec Secure Holding Cells_

_1900 Zulu_

_3 May 2183_

_C-Sec Academy, Citadel_

A week in solitary's nothing to half an hour at the Villa, especially when that solitary was more than earned. Before she made it to the elevators after the botched Council meeting, Anderson caught up with Kelsa and told her about a lead she could chase down; a man named Harkin, a human, one of the first in Citadel Security. Anderson said he might not know much, but he was holed up in a club called Chora's Den, which was more than good enough for Kelsa.

Harkin hadn't known anything, except how to scream when Kelsa broke his arm. In her defence, Kelsa had a whole bottle of asari liquor behind her before she tried to ask the bastard anything. The scream had brought over a krogan bouncer who didn't much care for her offer to settle the issue with an arm-wrestling match, so she wound up breaking his leg. Things are a little fuzzy after that, but whatever she did, Kelsa figures that five nights in the hole's gotta be worth it.

When the door opens on the sixth day, Kelsa's doing pull-ups without her shirt on, hanging from the bars that cover the hole in the cell's ceiling. _Three-thirty-four_, she counts. "Six more," the soldier calls through her teeth, and she does all six reps before she drops the two-and-a-half metres to the cold grey floor. The sweat's already cooling on her skin as she turns, and she seeks Alenko's eyes flit across her chest, dancing from the bluejay on her shoulder to the N7 etched above her right breast. "Eyes up here, Lieutenant," she sighs, but there's no bite in it. "You got something for me?"

Alenko nods, his eyes fixing on the wall over Kelsa's shoulder while she rolls her shirt on. "The captain's patched things up with C-Sec and the Council as much as he can...enough to get you out of here, anyway."

"It helps that Harkin's not pressing charges," comes a metallic voice, half-familiar. _Vakarian_, Kelsa remembers. "But I might've had something to do with that."

She can't see the turian since Alenko's filling the narrow doorway. "So I'm free to go?"

Alenko nods and steps aside, but Vakarian speaks up again. "As long as you let me go with you," he says as Kelsa steps out of the cell. "I heard what you told Saren last week, and I want to nail that bastard to the floor, same as you."

Kelsa looks the alien up and down; he's not wearing a C-Sec uniform anymore. She doesn't know if that's good or bad. "If you wanna help me kill Arterius, welcome aboard, Vakarian."

It's a long walk from the secure holding cells up to the academy, and the lights are just as harsh as they were when Kelsa came through, drunk and bloody. Along the way Alenko briefs her about his talk to Barla Von, a volus businessman with ties to the Shadow Broker, who says that there's a quarian that can give them the damning evidence they need to take Arterius down, if only they can save her from his assassins in time. Eventually they make it to outprocessing, and Kelsa gets her guns and hardsuit back, with the warning that her next offence would land her in much deeper shit. She mumbles the right words and suits up, glad she didn't have to try to break out...this time, at least.

Near the front of C-Sec Academy, Kelsa sees a krogan arguing with a human C-Sec officer. At first glance, she thinks it's the same one that got his leg broken a week ago, but this one looks a lot more seasoned; his face and neck have an old scar from when something with three claws swiped down the side of his head, probably before she was born. "I don't take orders from you," he rumbles at C-Sec.

C-Sec's eyes narrow. "This is your only warning, Wrex."

"You should warn Fist," the krogan grunts, leaning down and in to bring his face closer to the human's. "I _will_ kill him."

To his credit, C-Sec doesn't fold in on himself and cry, even if his voice does shake a little bit. "You want me to arrest you?"

The krogan, Wrex, chuckles. "I want you to try." Then he shoulder-checks the human as he walks past, only stopping short when his blood-red eyes catch on the sight of Kelsa and her crew. "Do I know you, human?"

"Maybe," Kelsa shrugs. "Just got outta the hole after I broke a few tables in Chora's Den."

Wrex's eyes widen. "You're the little pyjak that broke Duggan's leg!" He looks impressed. "He's been yammering all week that it's too bad you're locked up, or else he'd kill you."

Kelsa looks around and lifts up her hands. "Looks like I ain't locked up anymore," she says. "And it looks like you and I both have some business with Fist, so I guess he'll get his chance, if he wants to take it."

The krogan barks another laugh, but then he eyes her and the squad. "Wait a minute," Wrex says. "You're going after Fist?"

"I'm going after Saren Arterius," Kelsa corrects him. "Fist is just the next door I'm kicking open to get there. I'm Commander Shepard."

Wrex rumbles, thoughtful. "Shepard...I've heard a lot about you. Not too many people get to insult the Council to their faces, and not too many humans can get the drop on a krogan, even a young pup like Duggan." He leans in, like he did with the C-Sec officer. "We're both warriors, Shepard. Out of respect, I'm giving you fair warning. I'm going to kill Fist."

Kelsa leans in, too, until she can smell the krogan's breath. "Not until I get what I need to get Arterius thrown out of the Spectres," she tells him, her nostrils flaring. "Way I see it, we can work together, or we can settle things right now."

Alenko and Vakarian both tense up, but neither reaches for a gun, not yet. "My people have a saying," Wrex says. "Seek the enemy of your enemy, and you'll find a friend." He draws up to his full height and holds out an enormous paw.

"I think we're gonna get along just fine, Wrex," Kelsa says, pumping the krogan's hand twice. "Now let's go find Fist."

* * *

Author's note: Thanks so much to all of my lovely reviewers, and to everyone who's reading along! And thanks, as always, to my indefatigable beta-reader, **clafount**! I've almost completed the first 'arc' of _Sol Invictus_, which will take us to the opening of ME2. That means I'm taking a little hiatus from writing, so you'll be getting more frequent updates until I run out of material. Hopefully it won't take me too long after that to get back into the swing, though.


	10. Ch 9: Family Portrait

_Citadel Tower_

_1100 Zulu_

_6 May 2183_

_Presidium, Citadel_

The Council took some convincing to admit Kelsa back into their audience chamber, after she and Vakarian and Wrex assaulted Chora's Den with military organisation; Udina said it was a miracle that Kelsa wasn't locked up permanently. But once they found the quarian, with her verified audio of Saren Arterius admitting his complicity in the Eden Prime attack and plotting future aggression, the councilors agreed to rehear Udina and Anderson's case. Kelsa's only here at Anderson's insistence, and other than him, she's got no backup. The aliens didn't let her bring her guns and armour back into the Citadel Tower, so she's wearing her N7 field fatigues with an Alliance beret. Not that that makes her any less dangerous, but she doesn't tell the Council that. In fact, she's decided not to say a word until spoken to first, no matter how stupid Udina and the Council get.

The turian councilor looks the least patient of the three aliens. "We were told that you have actual _evidence_ to support the claims we've previously rejected, Ambassador," he says. "Get on with presenting it; we would like to get to more important business."

_Like ignoring some other species' problems_, Kelsa doesn't say. Udina doesn't bluster, for once; instead he lifts his left arm and activates his omni-tool. "_Eden Prime was a major victory for us_," the computer spits out, in Arterius' gruff purr. "_The beacon has brought us one step closer to finding the Conduit._"

The asari councilor tilts her head. "Is that authentic?" She asks, and Udina cuts the playback, just before it starts getting good.

"I shall analyse it, Tevos," the salarian councilor says, activating his own omni-tool. "Please repeat the recording, Ambassador."

Udina grumbles. "Gladly, Councilor Valern...there's more to it, as well. I believe the Council should hear all of Saren's treachery in full." The three councilors nod, even the turian, whose name Kelsa hasn't caught yet. Udina restarts the audio and Arterius' voice crackles out of his omni-tool once more. "_...to finding the Conduit_." After a second's pause, an unfamiliar woman's voice picks up. "_And one step closer to the return of the Reapers_." The ambassador's omni-tool blinks out, but he raises his arm higher, pointing his finger at the councilors. "You wanted proof," he scoffs. "There it is."

"I know that voice," the asari councilor, Tevos, says, glancing over to her salarian counterpart. "Is the message authentic, Valern?"

"It is," the salarian tells them, but he doesn't sound too pleased to say it. "It appears Saren has betrayed us."

The turian councilor snorts angrily, but when he speaks, it's obvious he's angry at Saren. "This evidence is irrefutable, Ambassador Udina. Saren will be stripped of his Spectre status, and all efforts will be made to bring him in to answer for his crimes."

_Who's gonna be making those efforts_? Kelsa doesn't ask. Tevos frowns. "I recognise the other voice," she says again. "The one speaking with Saren. There is no way these humans could have fabricated it." She looks over to the turian. "Sparatus, it's Matriarch Benezia. I'd know her anywhere."

The turian, Sparatus, grumbles thoughtfully. "Then it appears Saren's treachery has already begun to spread beyond the Citadel. Only the spirits know how far."

"Benezia is a powerful biotic, with many followers," the asari tells them. "She will make a powerful ally for Saren."

Councilor Valern taps on his chin. "I'm more interested in these Reapers that she mentioned," he says. "What do you know about them, Ambassador?"

Udina shrugs and looks to Anderson. The captain steps forward. "Only what was extracted from the geth's memory core," he tells the Council. "The Reapers were an ancient race of machines that wiped out the protheans...then they vanished."

The human ambassador jumps in. "The geth obviously believe the Reapers are gods, and Saren is the prophet for their return." He pounds a fist into his open palm. "That's why he led them to Eden Prime, to help find the Conduit!"

The salarian councilor doesn't look satisfied. "Do we even know what this _Conduit_ is?"

"Saren thinks it can bring back the Reapers," Anderson answers him. "That's bad enough, in my book."

Sparatus holds up a three-taloned hand. "Listen to what you're saying, Captain," he begs Anderson. "Saren wants to bring back a race of machines that wiped out all civilisation from the galaxy?" He shakes his head. "Impossible. It has to be." He sounds like he's trying to convince himself. "Where did these Reapers go? Why did they vanish, and how come we've found no trace of their existence?" The turian's mandibles twitch. "If they were real, we'd have found _something_!" Kelsa's discipline stretches to the breaking point, but she just manages to hold back her tongue; to tell the truth, she's been a little freaked out ever since the quarian, Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, played the recording of Saren and Benezia in Udina's office a couple of days ago. Those bad dreams she had on Eden Prime were almost past her, until she heard of the Reapers...since then, she hasn't been sleeping too good.

"The Reapers are obviously a myth," Valern scoffs, and Kelsa isn't sure she disagrees with the salarian. "A convenient lie to cover Saren's true purpose, whatever that may be." _I hope so_, Kelsa thinks to herself, as hard as she's ever thought anything.

Tevos brings up a console on the podium in front of her, and after a few seconds of furious typing, she nods to herself. "There," she says. "Saren Arterius has been stripped of his Spectre authority, and he is now considered a rogue agent. That should strip him of the resources he needs to enact his plans."

"That is not good enough," Ambassador Udina declares, raising his fist again. "You know he's hiding somewhere in the Traverse! Send your fleet in!" Kelsa can tell right off the bat that Udina's tone isn't likely to get him what he wants, but she chalks that up to him being unable to back up the threat behind his demand with any actual force.

Valern frowns. "A fleet can hardly track down one man," he points out.

Undaunted, Udina keeps pressing on. "The Citadel Fleet could secure the entire area," he says. "Prevent the geth from attacking any more of our colonies."

"Or it could trigger a war with the Terminus Systems," Sparatus answers, dismissing the ambassador's concern with a wave. "We won't be dragged into a galactic confrontation over a few dozen human colonies!"

Kelsa's resolve finally breaks. "Don't send in a fleet, then," she says, almost too quietly for the dignitaries to hear. "Send me after him."

Udina and Anderson both jump, as though they forgot she was standing behind them, and the asari councilor looks thoughtful for a minute. "That is one solution worth considering," she admits.

The turian doesn't think so, apparently. "No!" He growls. "It's too soon!" Kelsa blinks, understanding too late how the Council must've interpreted her outburst, but Sparatus goes on before she can say anything. "Humanity is not ready for the responsibility that comes with joining the Spectres!"

"It was a turian Spectre who betrayed this Council," Captain Anderson says, forcefully. "And it was a human who exposed him!" He gives Kelsa a sidelong glance. "She's more than earned this."

_But I don't want_-it's too late, Kelsa can tell. All three councilors look back and forth at one another just that same way they did the last time Kelsa saw them, when they declared the evidence against Arterius insufficient. After a minute, each one of them nods, and they start tapping on their consoles. Kelsa can feel eyes on her; Anderson's, of course, and Udina's, but also at least a dozen pairs from the Citadel Tower's diplomats and dignitaries. The chamber's wings, empty only a few minutes ago, now look full of curious onlookers. Councilor Tevos is the first to look up from her console, right at Kelsa. "Commander Shepard," the asari says, with a little smile on her face. "Step forward." Kelsa does so, swallowing down her objections, standing as tall and proud as she thinks Anderson expects her to. Whispers trickle in from the crowd in the wings, an uncertain murmuring, and even more people press into the balconies to each side of the Council's dais. The asari councilor lets the whispers run for about thirty seconds before she keeps going. "It is the decision of the Council that you be granted all of the powers and privileges of the Special Tactics and Reconnaissance branch of the Citadel."

Valern picks up where Tevos leaves off. "Spectres are not trained," he says, practiced awe in his voice, "but chosen. Individuals forged in the fire of service and battle; those whose actions elevate them above the rank and file."

Kelsa feels sick to her stomach, but she doesn't twitch a muscle. She doesn't want this, but she can't say no; she can't disappoint Anderson. She can't disappoint Jay, even if he's only a few faded memories in the back of her head. The asari councilor starts talking again, about how Spectres are symbols that embody the galaxy's highest ideals, but the human soldier doesn't listen too closely. She can't, or else she'll scream at them; she's not a hero and she's not a guardian of galactic peace, no matter how much Councilor Sparatus growls about it. It's only when the salarian councilor starts talking to her directly that Kelsa stops her mind from wandering.

"We're sending you into the Traverse after Saren," Valern tells her. "He's now a fugitive from justice, so you're authorised to use any means necessary to apprehend or eliminate him."

Kelsa can't imagine three more beautiful words in any language. "Any means necessary," she repeats, almost unable to believe it. Not even Alliance Special Forces can promise her that.

"You're a Council Spectre," Sparatus says. "In the execution of our missions, you answer to no authority but us." He doesn't sound happy. "Saren was one of our most skilled assets, Commander. Are you certain you can get the job done?"

The soldier salutes, as sharp and crisp as if the turian was an Alliance admiral. "Yes, sir," she tells him. "I'll find Saren Arterius, and I will end him."

* * *

_Subsurface Prothean Ruins_

_1945 Zulu_

_12 May 2183_

_Therum (ashore), Knossos_

It took the Alliance two days to give Kelsa a ship, and a promotion to staff commander along with it, even though she didn't ask for either of them. And she damn sure didn't ask to take the _Normandy_ off Anderson's hands after a single mission, but Hackett gave it to her, anyway. Anderson said he didn't hold it against her, that finding Arterius was more important, but Kelsa can still feel the sting behind his eyes, mixed in with his pride. That was four days ago. Now the _Normandy's_ a one-ship flotilla, attached to the Fifth Fleet but outside its regular order of battle; Kelsa's in charge of the mission parameters, and while she and the ship are technically part of the Alliance, Hackett's designated himself to an advisory role until the Council's business is concluded. To that end, Kelsa's spent the last four days scouring the Artemis Tau cluster in search of Matriarch Benezia's daughter, who's supposed to be some kind of prothean expert. The asari's allegiance is unknown, but if Arterius gets his hands on her, he'll use her to help him find the Conduit, and Kelsa can't let that happen.

It looks like Kelsa and her team have struck gold on Therum, a dusty rock world dotted with prothean ruins and guarded by several platoons worth of geth. Even though they're made of silicon and wires rather than flesh and blood, they all stop twitching if you shoot them enough times...or just the once, if you're using the Mako's gun. Kelsa's dropped thirty-two of them since they had to leave the tank behind, just ahead of Wrex's thirty and Alenko's twenty-eight. Vakarian's taken twenty-five looks through his scope and he's seen a machine drop each and every time, which means he'd be the undisputed champion if they counted kills per shot.

"A dead flashlight's a dead flashlight," Alenko gruffs, when Vakarian points that out. He must've got the nickname from Williams, who's back on the _Normandy_, helping Tali'Zorah guard the engine room. "You want to take out a few more, you've got that assault rifle hooked to your shoulder."

Wrex cackles. "You'd both see more action if you didn't hide behind every damn scrap of rock you came across." While he's talking, one of the high-jumping synthetics leaps down from the ceiling of the cave they're picking their way down, but before the krogan can take it out, Kelsa steals his kill. "Now that's not fair, Shepard," he grumbles.

The soldier shrugs, throwing a glance behind her. "You talk too much," she tells them, smirking. _Thirty-three_. "Come on," she says, rolling a nod to a rickety-looking elevator. "The signal's coming from underneath us." Kelsa hangs back to let the others onto the platform, only because that means she'll be the first one off when it reaches the next level down.

Or she would, if the geth hadn't fucked up the scaffolding so that the platform hitches halfway to the cavern floor. The whole thing shudders and tips sideways, and Kelsa has to jump onto a stony outcropping to keep from falling all the way. Rock chips off around her from incoming fire, and instinct drives the soldier on, so that she dives and dances onto some lower boulders. The wall to her left's unnatural, smooth stone carved with designs from over fifty thousand years ago; the discovery shut down the mine by Alliance and galactic law, and the mining company simply abandoned the shaft, leaving all of their equipment to rot underground. A quick glance tells Kelsa that some kind of stasis field covers the gap in the prothean ruin, and she judges it safe to leave that flank unguarded as she looks for better cover amidst the rock and the drilling machines. Another twenty-seven geth later, eight of them Kelsa's kills, and the cavern's finally still. Still, but not quite silent.

A muffled echo draws the soldier's attention back to that blue-tinted wall, and a soldier's wariness sees Kelsa level her shotgun, just in case. She sees the figure of an asari caught in the middle of the force field, the alien's feet nearly a metre from the ruin's floor. Kelsa doesn't relax, though, even as she crosses the littered floor; she keeps her gun up, and the rest of her squad follows her lead. "Are you Liara T'Soni?" Kelsa asks, once she's close enough to make out the asari's whimpers more plainly.

The alien can wiggle a little, just enough to try to talk. "I am," she says, her voice echoing strangely through the kinetic barrier. "Please, help me...I've been trapped here...for days, possibly."

Kelsa doesn't move. "How'd you get stuck like that?"

"I was investigating these ruins," the asari tells them. "It appears...I must have activated some kind of...security field," she manages, but it's clear that every word takes more effort than the last. "The control panel is...behind me. If you can...reach it...that would help."

The soldier looks back to the ruined elevator. "Doesn't look like we're getting out the way we came in," she says, more to herself than anything. "There another way up back there, too, T'Soni?"

"There is," the asari warbles, but Kelsa turns her back to the trapped alien.

"Alenko," the commander snaps. "Keep her in your sights." The lieutenant replies with an uncertain _Aye, aye, Commander_, and Kelsa stalks back through the cave until she comes to a big machine that looks like it could come in handy. "I think this'll help."

"I think so, Shepard," Vakarian says, from three steps behind her. Covering her back, even though he's not under her command; they're both after the same thing, they're both soldiers, and that's good enough. "It's a mining laser, Eldfell-Ashland proprietary design...which means they stole it from a turian firm," he quips. "Give me two minutes and I can have it slicing through this rock like a sword through the sea."

Kelsa nods and directs Wrex and Alenko to stand aside. True to his word, the turian has the laser spinning to his will, and he uses it to carve a trench down to the next level of ruins. "I...think that did it," T'Soni gasps. "Please hurry...I think I'm running...out of air…"

The commander leads the charge down the new pathway, but there aren't any geth waiting for them in the lower section of the prothean ruin. Just as T'Soni said, there's a way up to her level; another elevator, both far older and much more advanced than the platforms that Eldfell-Ashland threw up in the catacombs to help their miners get around. Just as the elevator reaches the captive asari, an ominous rumbling sounds from the walls of the cave beyond her. "Shit," Kelsa says. "Looks like we don't have too much time."

Alenko's already at the control panel that T'Soni told them about. "I...think I can get this," he says. "Doctor T'Soni, do you know which buttons I should press to release you?"

"I...I'm not sure," T'Soni tells him, struggling, trying to turn her head. She can't quite make it. "I know the code is directional...you see there are four circular buttons? Those will take down the shields...if you can press them...in the correct order…"

"Got it," the lieutenant vows. The ruins are shaking, just a little bit, and Alenko's gotta try three times, but he eventually figures out the right sequence. The blue-tinted barriers flicker and die, and the asari falls onto her hands and knees.

Kelsa makes sure she doesn't stay that way for long; the soldier rushes forward, picking T'Soni up roughly by the collar of her uniform and pinning her against the old prothean wall. Kelsa's combat knife whispers against the alien's sapphire throat, just underneath her jaw, while the soldier's shotgun rests flush against T'Soni's cheek. "I've got three questions," Kelsa tells the other woman, "and if I don't like your answers, I _will_ kill you, asari. You get me?"

"Commander," Alenko ventures, nervous. "This place is about to come down...is now really the time?"

Kelsa's green eyes don't twitch away from the asari's sapphire orbs. "It is if she wants to keep breathing for more than five minutes," she tells her subordinate. "Now, tell me what Saren Arterius wants with this place."

The asari's face is blank, from shock or exhaustion or terror, but mention of the name should've registered _something_. Instead, even with the possible tools her of own death within millimetres of her face, T'Soni blinks. "I've never heard that name before," the asari claims.

For some reason, Kelsa believes her. A few chips rain down from the ceiling, too close above them. "Okay," she says. "Do you know what your mother's been up to? Why she's betrayed the Council?"

The ridges that serve as the asari's eyebrows pull together. "Betrayed...what?" Now she looks afraid, but it's not the fear of guilt, at least as far as Kelsa can tell. "I've not spoken more than pleasantries with Mother in over fifty years, since I finished University and struck out on my own."

It's Kelsa's turn to blink. _Fifty years?_ She almost asks how old T'Soni is, but that would burn up her last question, and they really _don't_ have a lot of time. "Have you ever heard of the Reapers?"

Several loud crashes steal the words of T'Soni's response, but it's clear that she said _no_. "Come on, Shepard," Wrex yells. "This place's gonna blow!"

Kelsa hesitates for one more heartbeat before she pulls back. "Keep an eye on her," she yells to Alenko, and she punches the ancient elevator to take them as high as it'll go the second he pulls the asari onto the platform. _As high as it'll go_ doesn't quite get them to the surface, though, and there's a fresh gang of geth waiting for them in the tunnel that the elevator connects them to.

A gigantic krogan, even bigger than Wrex, looks to be their leader. "I believe _that_ belongs to Saren," he rumbles, pointing his assault rifle in the asari's direction. "As thanks for retrieving her, I'm to give you a quick-"

"We don't have time for this shit," Kelsa barks, lunging into a run. She's still got her big field knife in her left hand, turned down so the flat of the blade's flush with her forearm. The distance to her quarry disappears before she's even finished talking, and Kelsa takes a spray of assault rifle fire on her shields before she can sink the knife into the krogan's eye. That, coupled with a point-blank shotgun blast to the turtle-man's throat, is just enough to bring him down with a gurgled scream. Kelsa lets go of her knife as the krogan falls, using her momentum to bull into the geth. She takes two of them out, but the rest are just a distraction that the others can clean up, and she urges the rest of the team forward as the cave shakes apart around them.

The _Normandy's_ sleek profile is waiting for the party at the mouth of the cave, and Kelsa can't imagine a more welcoming sight. She dives into the open cargo bay, rolling to one knee, and a half-second later she's joined by the rest of the shore party, along with a thick plume of red-brown dust from the final collapse of the ruins.

"Cutting it a little close there, Commander," Moreau quips over the intercom. "Another ten seconds and we'd've had to pull you out of lava and sulfur. The _Normandy's_ not really spec'd to land in an active volcano...you know, for future reference."

Kelsa coughs, choking on the first answer that comes to mind. She sees that someone, probably Williams, has recovered the Mako. "Get us the fuck outta here, Lieutenant," she says instead. "Set course for the relay."

"Aye, aye, Commander," the pilot affirms. "Know where you want us to jump to?"

The soldier straightens up, taking stock of her crew, and their new guest. "Haven't decided," she admits. "We picked up a package I wanna open first. Shepard out." The comm crackles and cuts out. "Everybody all right?"

Vakarian and Wrex both say they're fine. "Just some scrapes and bruises, ma'am," Alenko tells her, but he nods to T'Soni. "I think Liara should see Doctor Chakwas, though. Exhaustion and dehydration, if for no other reason."

The asari struggles to her feet. "I'm fine, really," she says. "Now that I've been able to move and breathe…"

Kelsa grunts a laugh. "I didn't scramble that krogan's brain just to watch you die of thirst." She checks her gun for dust, but the gesture must look menacing, because the asari flinches. Kelsa frowns, but she doesn't feel guilty. "I'll take you to see the doc, then we'll hold a debriefing in the comm room. Everybody meet up there in half an hour." She looks over to the armory bench. "You too, Williams. Bring the quarian." The other human woman snaps off an _Aye, aye, ma'am_, even though she was skulking around and trying to make herself invisible to the mostly-alien party. Kelsa nods and caches her shotgun at the small of her back, making a note to clean it out when she gets the chance, and then she gestures for T'Soni to follow her. The asari hesitates, sparing a glance to Alenko, who probably seems much friendlier. "It wasn't a request, T'Soni," the commander reminds her.

Finally the alien draws up her courage, and follows Kelsa into the elevator. Here, in the ship's brighter lights, Kelsa can see more details; the splash of darker freckles over the asari's pale-blue cheeks, the purple hue to her lips. She's tall, taller than Alenko, but she's obviously rattled by Kelsa's inspection. "I am at a loss," T'Soni says, swallowing; as she does so, Kelsa notices a thin line of purple on the right-hand side of the asari's throat, where the knife whispered just a little too closely. "You know my name, even my mother's name, but I don't know yours."

The soldier takes a breath, and the elevator doors open onto the crew deck. "I never knew my momma's name," she admits, and she's not quite sure why she does it. "But she called me Kelsa."

* * *

Author's note: Thanks so much to everybody who's reading along, especially to my lovely reviewers! And an extra-special thanks to **clafount** for being such an awesome beta-reader!


	11. Ch 10: A Helping Hand

_Communications Room, SSV Normandy_

_0115 Zulu_

_13 May 2183_

_FTL Transit to Mass Relay, Artemis Tau Cluster_

The first time she was in the comm room there were only two chairs here, the swivel-kind, bolted to the floor. Now Pressly-whose ground-fighting days are long behind him, which made him Kelsa's choice for XO over Alenko-has decked the room with enough folding chairs for everyone in Kelsa's shore party to sit if they want. Kelsa doesn't want to, and neither does Wrex, but everyone else grabs a chair, until they make a loose circle. The captain leans against a near wall, instead.

Alenko's the first to talk. "How're you feeling, Dr. T'Soni?" Apparently, he's still taking it upon himself to watch out for her.

The asari manages a smile, and for some reason, she shoots a glance Kelsa's way. "I'm as well as one might expect, given the circumstances," she says. "Thank you for your concern, Lieutenant."

Williams speaks up from one of the swivel chairs. "So what the hell went on down there, ma'am?" The gunnery chief's voice doesn't hide hurt feelings well, but her face is a mask.

"Geth were trying to...how would Ellison put it?" Kelsa's brow arches and she racks her memory for the drill instructor that both she and Williams had on Titan, years apart. Fucker loved using big words. "Ahh, yes," the commander hums. "_Abscond_...with the good doctor here. We got her first."

"For which I'm grateful," T'Soni says, but she's cut off when Kelsa and Williams both cut her with suspicious glances.

The gunny doesn't look too willing to take the asari's gratitude. "Your mom's working for Saren, isn't she?"

T'Soni's head dips. "That is what your captain has told me," she admits. "I cannot say that the commander is wrong."

"Then how can we trust you?" Williams demands. "You could be spying-"

"Williams," Kelsa barks, kicking off from the wall. "Stand down." The other woman chokes off whatever she was going to say, and the captain moves to the middle of the circle. "T'Soni knows the situation." _She knows how it'll go if I catch her doing anything she shouldn't_. "Tali, play your message, so we can remove any doubt."

"Of course, Shepard," the quarian answers, her voice modulated by the environmental suit that every member of her species has to wear for most of their lives. Something wrong with their immune systems, as far as Kelsa remembers from OCS.

Kelsa watches T'Soni's face closely as the recording plays back a woman's voice talking about the _return of the Reapers_. Shock and confusion give way to dismay. "So it _is_ true," the asari breathes. "This Spectre has betrayed the Council, and somehow gotten my mother mixed up in it...but I'm still not certain why they're interested in me."

"Saren's interested in finding the Conduit," Tali'Zorah says. "You're a prothean expert. He probably wanted you to help him find it."

The asari's brow ridges bunch up. "I've spent most of my life studying the protheans, it's true...but I've never heard of this _Conduit_, nor the Reapers, for that matter." She looks from the quarian to Kelsa, and then her eyes widen. "But...it can't be!"

Kelsa crosses her arms. "Talk, asari. What do you know?"

"I've spent the last fifty years studying the protheans," T'Soni tells her. "Their ruins, what we have of their writings. I've pieced together a number of clues about when and how they vanished, fifty thousand years ago...but I haven't been able to figure out _why_, exactly."

Now that they aren't in the middle of an erupting volcano, Kelsa lets her curiosity get the better of her. "And just how old _are_ you, T'Soni?"

The asari's cheeks twinge a deeper shade of blue. "I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I am only a hundred and six Thessian years old," T'Soni lets on.

The commander knows she shouldn't be surprised, but she can't help husking a laugh. "_Only_ a hundred and six, huh?"

T'Soni's lips curl into a smile. "A century may seem like a long time to a short-lived species like yours, Commander," she says, "but among the asari, I am barely considered more than a child." Kelsa finds her eyes drawn downward, just to the alien woman's neck; there's not even a hint of a scar from where her knife kissed T'Soni's flesh. Chakwas did a fine job. The commander's gaze snaps quickly upward when the asari keeps talking. "That is why my research has not received the attention it deserves," she explains. "Because of my youth, other asari scholars tend to dismiss my hypotheses on what happened to the protheans. But...if these Reapers truly do exist, we are all in far more danger than we may realise." Kelsa only nods, willing the woman to get to the point. "There are many theories about why the protheans disappeared, but they left remarkably little behind. But according to my findings, the protheans were not the first galactic civilisation to rise...nor were they the first to be violently cast down by some mysterious, pan-galactic cataclysm. The cycle began long before them."

"The geth seem to almost _worship_ the Reapers," Tali'Zorah adds. "From what little data I could recover from the module, they believe that the Reapers are waiting, and when they return, they will destroy all organic life, leaving the galaxy the realm of synthetics."

Kelsa's heart thuds a half-tick faster. "You think the geth could have the right idea, T'Soni?" She blinks away a flash from the beacon's fever-dream.

"The protheans began on a single planet," the asari says. "They rose up to found an empire which spanned the breadth of the galaxy, but their way was forged on the ruins of what came before...much like modern galactic society has emerged from the ashes of the Prothean Empire. Recently, I'd begun to suspect that their greatest achievements-the Mass Relays and the Citadel-were built from technology which must've come before."

Vakarian's multi-toned voice rumbles a concerned hum. "So you're saying that the entire history of the galaxy is wrong? That there's something to Saren's madness?"

T'Soni considers the turian for a second. "I'm saying there might be," she says at last. "It would fit with the pattern I've discerned from half a century of dedicated study. If only I had more evidence..."

"I think I might have some," Kelsa grunts, frowning. Her insides feel cold, and she has to keep from snapping at the curiosity she sees in the asari's face. "On Eden Prime, I got caught up in some prothean technology of my own," she goes on. "It was a beacon. Filled my head with...visions."

T'Soni doesn't look like that's nearly as silly as it sounds. "Vision…?" Then, miraculously, she nods instead of laughing. "Yes, that makes sense."

"It does?" Kelsa and Williams both ask at the same time; the gunny mumbles an apology when the commander raises a brow at her, and Kelsa quickly turns her attention back to the asari.

"The protheans' beacons were designed to transmit information directly into the mind of the user," T'Soni explains. "Finding one that still works is extremely rare!" Despite being trapped in a force field, then being shot at while outrunning a rockfall, the asari still manages to sound excited and, maybe, just a little jealous.

Kelsa glances down at the cold metal floor between them. "Yeah," she says. "It...broke, after I activated it."

Alenko clears his throat. "The commander got caught up in it after she pushed me away. It's my fault the beacon was destroyed."

"It's a wonder that you're still alive, Commander," T'Soni says. "The beacons were only programmed to interact with prothean physiology, which had to have been much more robust than the average human's." Kelsa looks up to see something close to admiration behind the asari's eyes, and that makes her feel even worse than the little flickers of fear that she spied before taking T'Soni to the med bay. "I am...amazed that you were able to make any sense of the information at all, Commander. A lesser mind would've been utterly destroyed in the process. You must be remarkably strong-willed."

Wrex laughs, low and resonant enough for Kelsa to feel it in her chest. "You saw Shepard take down a krogan battlemaster single-handed, with a buck knife and a boom stick," he chuckles. "And you're surprised she can take a little heat from some old computer?"

T'Soni sniffs and covers her mouth. "In the short time I've known Commander Shepard, she has surprised me more times than I care to count," the asari says through her fingers, keeping her eyes turned away from Kelsa.

The commander's throat tickles, but she swallows the odd sensation away. "I wouldn't get too impressed, doc," she deflects. "The images were all confused. To be honest, I was kinda hoping that I just got a little addled." _No such luck_, comes the whisper in her thoughts. "And this ain't exactly helping us find Arterius, or the Conduit, when it comes to that."

That brings T'Soni's attention back into focus. "Of course, Commander," she says. "My scientific curiosity got the better of me for a moment...but I'm not at all surprised that you're having trouble sifting through the images from the beacon." Without seeming to realise it, the asari pulls her top lip between her teeth, and when she lets it go, it's half a shade darker. "If...if you liked, I could try to help you sort it out."

Kelsa arches a brow, understanding the offer almost immediately. "You want to do that asari brain trick with me? Get in my head?"

"You know about melding," T'Soni breathes, not quite a question, and not quite an answer, either.

The commander feels four human and six alien eyes on her-_eight, if you count the quarian's_-and she shrugs. "I'll take a _yes_ or _no_, T'Soni." Kelsa doesn't feel like explaining herself to her crew, at least not all at once.

The asari pauses to think, but then she nods. "Then yes, Commander. If you're willing to give it a try."

Williams scoffs. "Let an alien mess around in your head? Doesn't sound like a good idea, Commander."

"Agreed," Kelsa sighs. "But it doesn't look like I've got a whole lotta choice, if I want to try and get a full night's sleep this side of the year 2200." She shakes her head when T'Soni sits forward. "Not here, though. Lieutenant Alenko'll show you to my chambers; in the meantime, I've gotta debrief the Council." The asari nods, and Kelsa scans the rest of the room. "You're all dismissed. Try and get some rest." The humans and aliens file out of the room, with parting calls of _Commander_ or simply _Shepard_, depending on whether or not they're officially under Kelsa's command. When the door closes behind Williams, the commander has Moreau patch her through to the Council, for all the good she thinks that'll do.

* * *

_Medical Bay, SSV Normandy_

_0735 Zulu_

_13 May 2183_

_FTL Transit to Sparta System, Artemis Tau Cluster_

The asari's eyes scrunch up and her throat makes a tense, strangled sound, but it relaxes into a groan. "What...where am I?" Those sapphire eyes flutter open, and Kelsa looks away, for the first time since she carried T'Soni into the med bay.

Chakwas comes to the commander's rescue. "You're on the _Normandy_, Dr. T'Soni," she explains. "Commander Shepard brought you here after an incident in her quarters about half an hour ago. How are you feeling?"

"I'm...not sure," the asari admits, bringing her fingers up to brush over her cheek, bruised a darker tint of blue than the rest of her face. "The last thing I remember is trying to meld with Ke...with the Commander."

Kelsa's eyes flit up at the slip of the tongue; no one's called her by her name in years. Even the aliens aboard call her _Shepard_. A small part of her wonders what nearly drove T'Soni over that edge, and then what made her pull back. "I think I punched you," the soldier says, her mouth twisting. "As soon as you touched me, it was like going through the beacon's vision all over again."

T'Soni winces, either from her own touch or from the memory. "Yes...I recall a little, now. The information imparted by the beacon is even more complex than I'd thought possible." She sighs and struggles to sit up on the table. "I suppose I should thank you, Commander."

Kelsa arches a brow and shoots a glance to Chakwas. "You sure she ain't fucked up, doc?"

"I assure you, I am quite myself," T'Soni insists. "Though if you hadn't broken our connection...I'm not sure that would've been the case." She smiles to herself and looks away. "I don't believe I could have withstood even the echo in your mind for a few moments. The visions were all-consuming."

The soldier steadies herself with a breath, unsure what to make of the other woman's confidence. "Leave us," she tells Chakwas, remembering her own recent awakening in this very room. "Please." The human doctor double-checks some diagnostic readings from the table and then complies; only once she's alone with the asari does Kelsa let herself feel a thread of guilt. "I _am_ sorry, T'Soni," she says, frowning. "Is there somewhere safe in the Traverse we can drop you?"

T'Soni tilts her head, curious. "You do not wish my help on your mission to stop Saren?"

"You said yourself you don't know anything else," Kelsa points out. "If you're telling the truth, you'll just get in the way. If you're lying, I'll wind up having to shoot you. I don't really wanna do that." She realises that she's telling the truth even while she says it.

T'Soni looks like she believes the threat. "I don't know anything that could help Saren find the Conduit," she repeats. "But that doesn't mean I can't be of use to you...nor does it mean Saren won't send more geth after me, wherever I go." The asari hugs herself and glances down, looking small and vulnerable.

That doesn't make Kelsa want to keep her around, because the soldier knows that where she's going, small and vulnerable things won't live too long. "You've seen what happens when geth come after me," she says. "I don't run away, I don't hide. And I don't trust you enough to leave you on my ship while I'm not around, so if you stay here, you're gonna wind up face-to-face with things trying to kill you...or worse."

"I can defend myself," the asari claims, getting a bit defensive. She slips off of the medical table and straightens up, holding up a hand; the air around it glows a fluorescent blue for a second before she closes her fist. "All asari are given basic lessons in combat biotics and firearms training as part of their general education."

Kelsa grits her teeth. "Great," she says. "How many people've you killed, T'Soni?"

The alien blinks, her face falling. "...None, Commander," she admits. "I've spent my entire adult life on my own, or among other scientists. I...imagine you've had to take a few lives."

"Six hundred and sixty-four, if you count geth," the soldier says, automatically. "Five seventy, if you don't."

T'Soni goes a little pale under the room's lights. "That's a bit more than a _few_, I suppose." Then she takes a breath and shakes her head. "That only makes me feel even more strongly that I'd be far safer at your side than in your path, Commander." She returns Kelsa's smirk with a little smile of her own. "I understand your suspicion...maternal bonds run deeply in many species, and I imagine that my lack of relationship with my mother might seem strange to humans. But I have nothing to hide."

Kelsa nods, once. "We'll see," she says. "Meantime, get down to the shuttle bay and get yourself outfitted with the armoury. Tell Chief Williams I told her to keep an eye on you." If she didn't know better, Kelsa'd think she sees a little colour rise in T'Soni's cheeks. She blinks and turns away, telling herself that it's just the light playing with the asari's bruise.

* * *

_M35 Mako Infantry Fighting Vehicle_

_1210 Zulu_

_16 May 2183_

_Edolus (ashore), Sparta_

When she accepted Admiral Kahoku's request to search for his missing unit in the Sparta system, Kelsa didn't think it'd be anything more than a distraction. That's why she let Alenko and Wrex and Vakarian stay back on the _Normandy_, to catch up on some rest after Therum. True to her word, she brought T'Soni with her, and Williams was only too happy to come along; it didn't seem fair to keep Tali'Zorah back in the engine room while the others got to see a planet from the Mako, so Kelsa invited the quarian, too. Now Kelsa bets Tali'Zorah regrets accepting that invitation, and she _knows_ Wrex'll regret missing out on all the fun.

"I don't think I've ever heard anyone describe a thresher maw as _fun_ until now." T'Soni's voice is at least two octaves higher than Kelsa's ever heard it before.

Williams lays on the anti-personnel fire at the enormous worm while Kelsa zig-zags the Mako backwards. "Starting to re-think your decision to stay with the crew, doc?" The gunny asks, face jammed in the gunsights.

The asari starts to answer, but Williams fires the Mako's cannon, and the whole cabin shudders with the force of the enormous mass effect round's departure. "I'd feel better if I were more useful," T'Soni manages, and then she gasps, grabbing the cockpit's frame as Kelsa swerves to dodge a gob of toxic spit from the creature.

The commander watches the big shot impact high on the maw's abdomen, and it shudders convincingly, whining as it slithers backward into the hole it popped out of. "Think you can drive, T'Soni?" She looks to her right, where the alien's sitting beside her, at the front of the tank. On adrenaline-fueld impulse, the soldier shifts the steering wheel over to the other woman. "Squeeze the right handle to go forward, left to go back. Williams has control of the guns, so you don't have to worry about that."

"I don't understand," T'Soni breathes, as Kelsa unstraps herself from the driver's seat. "Is it dead?"

"No," Kelsa and Williams answer at the same time. _We're really gonna have to stop doing that_, Kelsa thinks to herself, scrabbling toward the hatch. "Try not to get eaten while I'm gone."

Tali'Zorah speaks up for the first time since the giant, ravenous space worm nearly flipped them a couple of minutes before. "Shouldn't you be worried about getting eaten yourself, Shepard?"

Kelsa secures her helmet to her hardsuit and unships her shotgun even before she opens the hatch. "I'm an Alliance Marine," she explains. "Too tough to swallow." She gives Williams one last glance. "Make some noise; I'll get on its six when it shows up again."

"Aye, Skipper," Williams barks, probably still too grateful to be scared.

Kelsa's scared when she jumps down onto the dusty, yellow-brown sand. She's faced a maw once before, as part of her N6 training out in the Styx Theta cluster, but the order of the day was survival and extraction back then. She ran away, she survived, but she didn't like it...and she didn't have a Mako to use as bait. "Cut an arc across the plain," she says into her helmet. "Circle around the wrecked tank and shoot into the ground."

"Yes, Commander," comes T'Soni's voice, and the Mako lurches forward. Williams does her part, scoring the ground with automatic weapon fire and the occasional cannon round as the asari finds the tank's balance.

Kelsa doesn't move a centimetre from where she landed on the ground, and she won't until the thresher maw reappears; she's scared, but it's the good kind of scared, with her heart thudding and her legs itching to run...but she can't, not yet. Not if she wants to keep herself outside of the big worm's belly.

When the Mako's about half a click away, the ground shudders and splits open right behind it, and Kelsa sees the scales and spines of the thresher maw's back rise up out of the dusty earth. The air cracks with an ear-splitting cry, and Kelsa's running before she knows it, running as fast as she can in her crimson armour. The Mako's swinging around, drawing the maw's attention, dodging acid spit and returning fire. It takes about half a minute for the soldier to cross the distance at her wild sprint, and the thresher maw still doesn't seem to notice her, until she jumps up onto the worm's scaly spine.

The maw cries out again, the sound cutting through Kelsa's shields and armour, vibrating painfully in her own lungs, but the soldier pushes on, using the worm's scales and tentacles to climb hand-over-hand until she reaches the curve of the maw's neck. She's at least thirty metres above the ground, now, and the worm almost manages to shake her off with a sudden shake of its head. Williams puts a cannon shell right in the maw's open mouth, which stuns the beast long enough for Kelsa to get a firmer footing. She pulls out her new combat knife and sinks it deep between the joint of two scales, even as her fingers tingle from another world-ending scream.

Kelsa keeps prying at those scales until they come loose, and she replaces the blade with her shotgun. She fires round after round into the softer flesh while T'Soni drives in figure-eights and Williams still manages to keep the cannon trained on the maw's gaping jaws. Black blood starts bubbling up between Kelsa's knees, and she keeps shooting, her ears ringing too loudly for her to hear her own grunted screams. The shotgun jams, too hot, so the soldier throws it away and takes up her pistol. Between her steady attack on the back of the thresher maw's head and Williams' regular bombardments, the ravenous space worm finally begins to tremble uncontrollably; its cries no longer scythe into Kelsa's bones, more pity than venom now. At the last minute, the soldier tips sideways, rolling into a controlled sprint down the middle of the monster's back as it rears up even higher off the ground.

Gravity gets the best of Kelsa ten metres from the sand, and she's just lucky that Edolus' gravity is just weak enough to keep her from breaking her legs when she hits the ground. The thresher maw isn't so fortunate; it tips sideways, making a wide arc, and the back of its head splits open when it lands. Yellow-brown dust turns into black mud as the worm bleeds out in the desert, and its twitching tentacles jerk more and more slowly, until they finally lay still.

Kelsa's helmet crackles. "You okay, Skipper?"

The soldier never thought she'd be so happy to hear Williams' voice. "Damn right," she gruffs, pushing up to her feet and looking around for her discarded weapons. "Stay sharp; there might be more around." After a minute of looking, Kelsa finds her shotgun sticking out of the sand at an angle. _Fuck_, she snorts, when it turns up jammed. "Rendez-vous at the Grizzly," she tells the Mako crew, burying her frustration under the exultation that comes from still breathing after you've come face to face with one of the deadliest things in the galaxy. _Except for the Reapers_, a small voice cuts through the adrenaline. "Yeah," she tells herself. "And I'll kill those bastards, too."

An uncertain voice sounds in her helmet, most likely T'Soni's. "What was that, Commander?"

Kelsa swallows. "Nothing," she barks. "Just talking to myself. I'll be at the wreck in a couple minutes." It isn't much farther than the thresher maw was, but each step seems like it takes forever, and when she gets to the ruined Alliance M29 Grizzly, the soldier's still too hopped-up to pretend to have any sympathy for the dead soldiers strewn about it. If they'd been better soldiers, she wouldn't be here; but they weren't, so she is.

"Look here, ma'am," Williams calls, from a few yards away. "Here's the distress beacon...looks like it was put up here deliberately, to draw people in." She gives the commander a significant look. "Doesn't seem right, does it?"

"Not even a little bit, Chief," Kelsa says, frowning. She patches her HUD through to the _Normandy_. "Moreau, we're ready for extraction. Got a beacon that needs analysing."

"Roger that, Commander," the pilot's voice crackles. "ETA forty-five seconds."

* * *

Author's note: Thanks so much to everyone who's reading allong, especially to people who've reviewed, followed, or faved. And thanks super-duper much to my awesome beta-reader, **clafount**!


	12. Ch 11: Sweet Dreams Are Made Of

_Kelsa's in an old place, a dead place, with shelves full of books and scrolls. The air's dusty, the light red-tinted, but not from the windows. Everything's covered with a couple of centimetres of dust; nobody's walked in these halls in half a dozen centuries...maybe more. _Why'm I here, then?_ Kelsa asks herself, and though her lips don't move, her voice echoes around the chamber like a church __bell._

_She looks around, but she can't find a door near her. The room stretches off forever in front of her, though, and there are small windows up near the ceiling. The sky's red, like it's burning. Like it's blood._

_A hitched cry draws all of Kelsa's senses, and a second look at the floor shows a trail through the dust on the floor, like somebody's had to crawl through it. Curious, Kelsa's eyes follow the trail back to her own feet, and then to the wall behind her. _Follow_, the walls whisper to her. _Follow and fulfill your fate_._

_Kelsa doesn't see any other way out of this room, so she decides to follow the trail. She doesn't think anything of the blue-purple smears that show up at irregular intervals; her attention's stolen by the high shelves around her, stuffed so full. On a whim she stops walking and reaches as high as she can; a puff of dust whirls as she pulls down a cracked, leather-bound tome. It's so heavy that it takes both of Kelsa's hands to keep it from falling to the floor. The cover's scrawled with runic shapes that she's never seen before._

_She tries to open the book, but as soon as the cover lifts enough to let her glimpse the first page, the entire mass disintegrates into glittering, golden dust. _Follow_, the walls urge her, and the globs of red-gold dust look like drops of blood suspended in the air around her._

_Kelsa cannot but obey; she _must_ follow the trail. Everything depends on it. She walks for hours, for days. Forever, until the bookshelves fall away and a far wall looms in the distance. The dust trail veers to the left, to the corner of the massive walls._

_Liara's huddled there, whimpering, covered in sweat, and she's scared she's going to die. Kelsa knows, then, that she's come here to kill the asari. She doesn't want to; she never wanted to hurt anybody, not really. But she's got no choice. _It's not personal_, she says, when she closes in on the trembling __woman._

Of course it's not_, Liara says, but it isn't her voice; when she looks up, it isn't her face. It's Jay's eyes, the same cool blue, and it's Jay's face underneath that blue-pebbled skin. _It was you or me_. The right-hand side of his neck's cut deep, blue-purple blood running down over his collarbone, staining Liara's uniform._

_The pistol feels heavy in Kelsa's hand, heavier than any gun's felt in longer than she can remember. It wasn't there a second ago, but it's there now, and she lifts it in a fog. _It was you or me_, Kelsa echoes, holding the weapon rock-steady even though the rest of her's shaking. Cold. _Love you_._

* * *

_Mess Hall, SSV Normandy_

_0400 Zulu_

_20 May 2183_

_FTL Transit to Feros, Theseus_

"Couldn't sleep, Commander?" Alenko's nursing a steaming cup, some kind of tea, and he looks a bit more shaved than usual.

Kelsa spins a chair around and sits back-to-front. "Not really," she says, throwing a quick glance to the med bay; Liara's set up a little office in the back storage room, where she's probably sleeping right now. "What do you think of your new crewmates, Lieutenant?" She asks, after a few seconds.

The man scratches his cheek idly. "The aliens?" He hums when Kelsa nods. "They seem...okay, ma'am. Normal...or as normal as people get on a frigate."

This isn't the first time they've talked like this, one-on-one, and Kelsa finds herself liking the idea of making it happen more often. She hasn't known Alenko too long, but she trusts him more than anyone else on the ship. "What do you think of T'Soni, in particular?"

"I think she was pretty shaken up by that little stunt you pulled back on Edolus, Commander," Alenko tells her. "Hasn't peeked out of Chakwas' little fiefdom for more than grabbing a bite or using the head since you all got back from planetside."

The commander smirks at his dismissal of facing a thresher maw on foot as a _little __stunt_. "She's not a soldier, Lieutenant," Kelsa points out. "Thought I might try scaring her a little bit."

Alenko grunts and smiles into his teacup. "You sure you didn't do that on Therum, ma'am?" He asks, after taking a sip.

Kelsa shrugs, but she can't quite meet the man's eyes. "I had no reason to think she wasn't working with Arterius," she says. "Still don't, really." Even she can hear how cheap the excuse is, but it's all she's willing to let on, even to herself.

"Come on, Commander," the lieutenant shoots back, rolling his eyes. "You've been around Liara long enough to know there isn't a dishonest bone in her body."

"Do asari have bones?" Kelsa wonders, trying to shake off the last flashes of her nightmare. "Or is it all hard cartilage all the way down?" Unlike the beacon dreams, she can still see Jay's face, as clear as when she shot him the first time...except he wasn't blue, then.

Alenko throws up his hands. "Beats me," he admits. "Maybe you should ask her that yourself sometime." He takes a long sip of his tea, and she can't tell if he sees through her smokescreen. "As to your real question, ma'am, I don't know if she'll be able to earn your trust," he says. "My gut tells me that Liara's being honest with us, but it's your ship, so it's your call."

The commander shrugs. "I guess it doesn't really matter," she settles. "I'll take her out with me until she gets hurt or dead or quits, and if I catch her trying to talk to her mom, this boat's got a perfectly good airlock." Curiosity has her smirking. "I wonder what'd happen to a body that dropped out of a mass effect envelope in deep space?"

Alenko's mouth opens, but he shuts it immediately, and sits up a little straighter. The voice that answers instead fills Kelsa's stomach up with ice. "It wouldn't be unlike a body falling over the event horizon of a small black hole," T'Soni says, from near the med bay door. "The abrupt change in velocity is strong enough to separate most organic matter at the molecular level," she goes on, like she's giving a lecture, "so I would wind up as a blue smear over a few hundred thousand kilometres."

Kelsa grimaces down at the mess table, unable to look up. For just a second, she wishes she'd taken up Alenko's offer for tea, just so she'd have a cup to hide behind. "Were your ears burning or something, T'Soni?" Not even clenching her eyes can save the soldier from a flash of Jay's asari head exploding into a purplish mist of meat and blood.

"I am unfamiliar with that idiom," the asari says, apologetically. "But I was actually hoping for another private word with you, Commander...unless I am interrupting you and the Lieutenant."

"You're not," Kelsa tells her, but she stands up and doesn't quite look at T'Soni. "It'll have to wait, though," she says, no room for compromise in her tone. "We're almost to Feros, and I need to make some rounds." That's not quite true; they won't be dropping out of FTL for at least another four hours, and Kelsa's only started _making rounds_ in the last couple of days. But the soldier doesn't feel like telling the asari that she's dreaming of killing her...even Kelsa knows that might not be the best thing for morale.

T'Soni takes a breath before she answers. "...Of course, Commander," she allows. "But I would like to speak with you before we land, assuming you were serious about taking me with you."

Kelsa swallows and forces herself to nod. "We'll do that," she promises, and she's developed an annoying habit of keeping her promises since she joined the Alliance. The soldier nods a bit more readily to Alenko, who gives her a parting grunt of _Commander_, before she turns to the refuge of the elevator. The req officer's not at his post in the shuttle bay, but Kelsa figures the man probably keeps to the standard Alliance daytime schedule for his business contacts. Vakarian's nowhere to be seen, either; he could either be sleeping or tooling around inside the Mako to recalibrate the guns after their workout on Edolus. It should be Williams' job, but the turian knows even more about making big guns better than the gunnery chief does.

Wrex is standing at his normal post, by the armour lockers. "Shepard," he grunts, nodding with something like respect.

"Wrex," Kelsa shoots back, but she doesn't try to close in on him, despite the excuse she gave to T'Soni. The soldier's still trying to wrap her head around the _genophage_, a virus the salarians and turians developed to keep the krogan from reproducing and taking over the galaxy, more than a thousand years ago. So the soldier keeps marching, surprised to see Williams steady at work on the armoury bench. The woman grunts in frustration and mumbles _Shitshitfuckgoddamn_ just loudly enough for Kelsa to year over the low hum of the ship's engines. "Williams," the commander says, not quite a bark.

Williams jumps, anyway, and drops the gun before she turns and stiffens up. "What can I do for you, ma'am?" Her eyes are bloodshot and her hair's half-out of the tight bun she usually keeps it in.

Whatever Kelsa was going to say gets lost when she glances behind the gunny to find her discarded shotgun in at least three pieces on the bench. Reflexively, the soldier pats her front pocket, and relaxes when she feels the gun's trigger-the same trigger she took off the batarian weapon on Torfan-still cached there, snug. "I thought I told you to 'gel that thing."

The other woman keeps her eyes level, so she's staring at Kelsa's forehead, and her face betrays nothing. "Thought I could fix it for you, Commander," she explains.

"Why?" Kelsa wonders, doing her best to sound as blank as Williams looks.

The gunnery chief blinks, but schools her expression before it can crack. "Trying to show I'm useful, and grateful that you kept me on the team after you took over the ship, ma'am."

_After they stole the ship from Anderson and gave it to me_, Kelsa doesn't say. "You don't have to do that, Williams," she says instead. "You're a good soldier, and you could be a great one."

Williams' surprise breaks through the mask of professional stoicism, at least for a second. "Really, Commander?" When Kelsa nods, the gunny even lets herself smile, just a little. "I...thought you didn't like me."

"Stand at ease," the commander says at last, and she relaxes into the slightly-more-comfortable pose along with her subordinate. "And I didn't like you from the first second we met," she admits, "but that wasn't your fault. I was pissed off at Jenkins for walking into a geth recon drone instead of ducking like I fucking told him to." The memory's still enough to make Kelsa grimace, and her fists clench at the small of her back. "I thought he was smarter than that."

The gunny's face cracks into a frown. "Wait," she says, her brows drawing together. "You're mad at some kid for getting killed?" Williams says that, but Kelsa hears _What the hell's wrong with you?_

And she doesn't have an answer that the other woman's gonna like. "I was," Kelsa says. "If he'd kept his head, he woulda kept his head. Like you did, even when you thought you were gonna die." She won't say she's sorry, because she's not, but there's no reason for them to butt heads any more than they already have. "What do you say you and I start again," the staff commander suggests, relaxing as best she can.

"I...guess we can try, ma'am," Williams manages. "For a little while there, I thought the old Williams family curse was rearing its ugly head again."

The comment normally wouldn't even draw an acknowledgement from Kelsa, but in the interest of not fucking up their little ceasefire straight out of the gate, the soldier musters up some curiosity. "What kinda curse you think you have, Chief?"

Williams laughs. "You really don't know, Commander?" When Kelsa just arches a brow, the woman hurries on. "My grandfather was General Williams, ma'am," she explains.

It slides into place like a fresh ammo block. "General Ben Williams," Kelsa says, smirking. "The one who said _uncle_ on Shanxi, back in First Contact." Some of the older white officers call him _General Benedict Arnold_, even now, after some British guy that Kelsa never heard of until she made it to OCS.

"The very same, ma'am," the gunnery chief tells her, nodding. "He never lived it down, either. But he stayed true to the Alliance, and my father joined up only a year after the war." One of her eyes narrows, an acid edge of anger bubbling up just beneath her face. "He worked his _ass _off for over twenty years, but he never once got promoted after enlisting. Stayed Serviceman 3rd Class 'til the day he died."

Kelsa grunts a laugh. "And you thought I was holding that against you," she says; an answer, not a question. "Look at me, Williams...do I look like I give a fuck about what some old men think about your grandad?"

The gunny blinks, and she does look at Kelsa more closely, before she shakes her head. "No, ma'am," Williams answers. "But it's just...it's been such a part of my life since before I even joined up. Dad never complained, though, not once...and when I made Lieutenant 2nd Class, he was the happiest man in the whole goddamn navy." Her eyes go distant, and Kelsa doesn't turn away, even though she can tell the other woman's itching to share more. "He died the year before I got upped to Service Chief; a heart attack," Williams shares. "But I know he was watching me, proud as always."

The commander understands Williams' meaning all too well, but she can't help a little needling. "...Is he a zombie or something, Chief?"

Williams opens her mouth, but then she must think better of whatever she was going to say, because she swallows and shakes her head. "He's...you know," she says after a second. "In Heaven. With God."

"Uh-huh," Kelsa grunts, as noncommittally as she can.

"Is that a problem, ma'am?" Williams asks, caught in between defensive and nervous. "That I believe in God?"

The commander takes a breath, considering her own thoughts. "Not as long as you understand there are some people on this ship who don't," she decides. "Like me." It's been years since Kelsa's even thought about religion; if there is a God, it doesn't seem to give a fuck about stopping slavers. _Or the Reapers, whatever the hell they are_, Kelsa thinks to herself. But if she said that out loud, Williams would probably say that God's sending Kelsa after the bastards, and that's not an argument she wants to have. "So do we have a problem, Chief? Or can we try to make nice?"

Williams blinks several times, and it's obvious she wants to ask something else, but she really is too good a soldier to risk getting into a debate with her commanding officer. "No problem, ma'am. I'll...keep it to myself."

Kelsa nods, once. "Then we should get along fine." Then she gestures to the ruined shotgun on the bench. "You really should melt that thing down; get Serviceman Markham to minifacture me a new one. I think I've got enough credits for level 7 Firestorm." The commander digs the old trigger out of her pocket and tosses it at Williams. "Make sure he uses that trigger for it, and tell him I'll space him if he doesn't."

Williams catches the trigger with a snap of her fingers against her palm. "Will do, Commander," she promises.

"Get some rest first, though," Kelsa tells the gunnery chief. "We're gonna hit Feros in a few hours, and chatter says there's plenty of flashlights there already." Williams salutes and Kelsa returns it before she turns away, back toward the elevator; she could continue on to the engine room, but Adams is probably sleeping, and Tali'Zorah's probably too busy studying the _Normandy's_ drive core to make for an effective distraction. Instead, mindful of her promise, Kelsa drags her feet back up to the crew deck. Alenko's gone from the mess, probably in a sleeper pod. Chakwas isn't in the med bay, either, so Kelsa holds out a sliver of hope that T'Soni's made herself scarce, too.

_No such luck_, the commander huffs, when the door to the back office hisses open to reveal the asari sitting at her desk with her back turned. _Just like a civilian_, Kelsa thinks_._ From the front, asari look a hell of a lot like human women with blue skin, but from behind, the differences are much more obvious; those hard-cartilage tentacles that sweep back from their heads turn up into points just above the nape of the neck, which has odd ripples and scales that are much more sensitive to touch than human skin. Kelsa learnt _that_ the easy way, and the memory of those two nights in Azure keeps her from reliving her strange dream...at least until T'Soni turns around, and Kelsa almost flinches, half-expecting to see Jay's face hued in blue. "Commander Shepard," T'Soni breathes, giving Kelsa a little smile. "I'd thought you might opt to rest instead of coming to speak with me."

"I'll sleep when Arterius is dead," the commander grunts, stepping properly into the room and to the side, so the door's not at her back. "What'd you want to see me about, doc?"

T'Soni nods and rises from her chair. "I wanted to show you that I've been practicing," she says, reaching to her left and picking up a pistol.

Kelsa has her own drawn and trained on the asari's throat in half a heartbeat, the trigger a millimetre from clicking over. "Put it down," she barks, "or I'll put you down, asari." She doesn't blink, even though she wants to, and for just a second she sees a spray of red steaming in the cold winter air.

T'Soni gasps, dropping her weapon, and it clatters from the table to the floor. "I am sorry," the asari ventures, frozen in place, and her eyes tell a story of shock and fear that Kelsa can't quite bring herself to doubt. "It is not a real firearm," T'Soni continues, holding up her hands. "But a replica, used for target practice."

Kelsa's finger eases on the trigger until it's at half-pressure, but she doesn't swivel it away from the centre of T'Soni's throat. "Kick it over and we'll see about that," she offers; it's more than she thinks she should probably give, but she doesn't want her crew to start worrying about summary executions. She may be a Spectre, but she needs her crew if they want to stop Arterius. Nervously, the asari swipes her foot at the dropped gun, and it skitters across the metal floor two-thirds of the way to the commander. She slowly lowers herself to one knee, keeping her eyes and pistol focused as she picks up the supposed replica with her left hand; it's light, but it's an asari design, so she can't tell if that means anything...and the glyphs along the side are carved into the metal itself, so they don't change into any script Kelsa can recognise.

"There are two buttons on the left side," T'Soni says, still nervous. "The bottom one paints a new target and the top resets the score."

The soldier's nostrils flare when she sniffs, and she brings up the maybe-fake gun to the asari's belly. Without saying anything, she moves her thumb to press each button in turn, and then she pulls the trigger; the gun kicks and makes a small _pop_, and T'Soni flinches involuntarily, but no bullet hole opens up in the alien's abdomen...instead, a purple light flashes on the side of the replica's barrel.

T'Soni clears her throat. "That means you got me, Commander."

Kelsa lets out all of her breath in one hissed sigh and tosses the asari's toy back to her. "I had to be sure," she says, not at all certain why she feels the need to explain herself.

The asari catches the replica with only a little fumble and then she puts it back onto the table. "Now that we've established that I'm not trying to assassinate you, Commander, might you point your weapon elsewhere?"

The soldier hesitates for just a second before she relaxes and holsters the pistol at her hip. "I'm sorry, T'Soni," she says, and she means it. "Haven't got the best week's sleep. Guess I'm a little jumpy."

"That may be my fault," T'Soni sighs, glancing away. "Our incomplete meld must have renewed the visions from the beacon. I wish…" Then she shakes her head. "It doesn't matter, Commander. But I wanted to assure you that I will be ready for combat, when the time comes."

"We'll see," Kelsa grunts. "Painting a target with a laser gun is a hell of a lot different than shooting at something that can shoot back at you."

Now that she isn't under immediate threat of death, the asari's brow draws together, and when she speaks, she sounds quietly defiant. "I _have_ been in danger before," T'Soni says, defensively. "Prothean ruins are not often in the most well-patrolled areas of the galaxy, and relics can be valuable...so mercenaries and pirates have sometimes crossed my path." Slowly, the asari raises her right hand again, and a wreath of biotic blue flickers to life around her fingers. "Up until the geth on Therum, I've been able to escape through use of my biotics, and the combat training I've undergone in school." She closes her fist and the glow fades. "I assure you, I am ready and willing to contribute to your mission to stop Saren."

"We'll see," Kelsa drawls again, trying to shake off the memory of the last time she was so close to an asari's biotics. "If this thing goes down my way, we're gonna come across Benezia's path before the end, and I need to know you're not gonna stand in my way when that happens."

"Or shoot you in the back?" T'Soni ventures, leaning back against her table and crossing her arms. "The bonds between asari are not the same as for humans; it is true that daughters and mothers share close ties for many decades, but once an asari ends her education, she becomes independent...especially when her mother is a matriarch." She shakes her head. "The Benezia I knew would never have worked to further Saren's goals. _That_ is the woman I choose to call my mother, Commander Shepard."

Kelsa frowns and opens the door to her right with a wave of her hand. "We'll see," she says a third time. "In the meantime, try to get some rest, and we'll see how good you are with a real gun." The soldier backs out of the room and waits for the door to close before she turns and stalks back to her quarters; she won't sleep, but she can set her thoughts in order with a few hundred pushups until they're ready to dock.

* * *

Author's note: Thanks again to all of my lovely reviewers, and everyone else who's reading along! Especially to **clafount** for her wonderful beta-reading skeelz.


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